J LIBRARY OF -CONGRESS. 



! UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ! 









TEXT-BOOK OF PROSE; 



FROM 



BURKE, WEBSTER, AND BACON. 



NOTES, AND SKETCHES OF THE 
AUTHORS' LIVES. 



FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND CLASSES. 



BT THE 

Rev. HENRY N. HUDSON. 




^ 



1> 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY GINN BROTHERS. 
1876. 



^ 

V 






Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1876, 

By HEKEY N. HUDSON, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 



J. F. Loughlin, Book, Job, and Music Printer, 18 Post Office Square, Boston. 



PREFACE 



The Text-Book of Prose here offered to the public is 
intended as a sort of companion- volume to the Text-Booh 
of Poetry published a few months ago. Both volumes have 
originated in the same experiences, and the contents of 
both are ordered on the same principle, namely, that of 
teaching English literature by authors, and not by mere 
literary chips and splinters. Both the method of the work 
and the reasons for that method are set forth with some 
fulness in the Preface to the former volume. I have seen 
no cause to recede at all from the statement there made of 
them ; and as a repetition of them here would be something 
ungraceful, I must be content with referring the reader to 
that Preface, merely remarking withal, that the matter was 
no recent or sudden thing with me, but the slow result of 
the experience and reflection of many years. And I am 
moved to renew my protest, if that be the right name for 
it, against putting young students through a course of 
mere nibbles and snatches from a multitude of authors, 
where they cannot stay long enough with any one to de- 
velop any real taste for him, or derive any solid benefit 
from him. 

I shall hope to be excused for observing, further, that 
the miscellaneous selections now so commonly in use in- 
volve one error of so gross a character, that it ought not to 
be left unnoticed. Those selections make a merit, appar- 
ently, of ranging over as wide a field of authorship as may 
be, and value themselves in proportion to the number of 
authors included. So their method is to treat the giants 
and the pigmies, the big guns and the popguns of litera- 
ture on a footing of equality : nay, you shall often find the 

iii 



IV PREFACE. 



smaller made even more prominent than the greater; per 
haps because the former are more apt to be popular than 
the latter. For instance, two pages will be given to Mac- 
aulay, or to a writer of still lower grade, where one is given 
to Jeremy Taylor or Addison or Burke. So, again, some 
fifth-rate or sixth-rate author, whose name is hardly known 
out of Boston, comes in for a larger space than is accorded 
to Daniel Webster. Or, once more, Edgar A. Poe's vapid 
inanities done into verse, where all is mere jugglery of 
words, or an exercise in verbal legerdemain, are made quite 
as much of as the choice workmanship of our best Ameri- 
can poets, Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier. This is an 
application of the levelling principle so unjust and so 
inexpedient, that we may well marvel how it should be 
tolerated in any walks of liberal learning and culture. 

No thoughtful person, I take it, will have any difficulty 
in gathering that this volume is made up, like its prede- 
cessor, with a special view to the oldest and ripest pupils 
in our high-schools and seminaries and academies. These 
pupils, it may well be supposed, are old enough and ripe 
enough to unfold at least the beginnings of literary and 
intellectual taste, so as to be at home and find delight in 
tasteful and elegant authorship, where the graces may do 
something towards making the ways of learning ways of 
pleasantness to them. 

Of the three authors here drawn upon, two are, by gen- 
eral suffrage, the very greatest in the prose literature of 
the English-speaking world, while the third is, I believe, 
generally and justly held to be, by all odds, the first in the 
prose literature of our own country. In the case of Burke 
and Webster, the works from which I had to select are 
somewhat voluminous, and it is quite likely that my selec- 
tions are not in all cases the most judicious that might 
have been made. On this point I can but plead that, after 
an acquaintance of many years with those authors, I have 
used my best care and diligence in looking out such por- 
tions as seemed to me to combine, in the greatest degree, 
the. two qualities of literary excellence and of fitness to the 



er- 



PREFACE. T 

purposes of this volume. Nor, perhaps, will it be amiss to 
add, in reference to Burke and Webster, that I often found 
it not easy to choose between several pieces, and that I was 
compelled by lack of room to omit a considerable number 
of pieces which I would have liked to retain : an embarrass- 
ment naturally springing from a redundancy of wealth. 

As to the principle on which the selections proceed, my 
aim has been, throughout, to unite the culture of high and 
pure literary tastes with the attainment of useful and lib- 
eral knowledge. I think it will not be questioned that 
there is something of special reason why our young people 
of both sexes should be early and carefully instructed in 
the principles of our federal Constitution, and in the 
structure and working of our august national State. We 
pride ourselves on the alleged competency of the American 
people for self-government. Yet it is but too evident that, 
in political matters, a large majority of them have not 
advanced beyond the " little learning " which is proverbially 
"a dangerous thing." The degree of intelligence which 
naturally issues in conceit and presumption is the utmost 
that can be affirmed of them. Thus it comes about that, 
for the seats of public trust, shallow, flashy demagogues are 
very commonly preferred to solid, judicious, honest men. 
At this day, our average voter certainly has not more 
judgment of his own than he had fifty years ago, and he 
has far less respect for the judgment of wiser men. The 
popular mind is indeed busy enough with the vulgar 
politics of the hour ; but in the true grounds and forces of 
social and political well-being it is discouragingly ignorant, 
while it is more and more casting off those habits of mod- 
esty and reverence which might do the work of knowledge. 

This may explain why so much of the present volume is 
occupied with discourses relating to government, and to 
the duties and interests of men as stockholders in the 
commonwealth. In the common principles of all social 
and civil order, Burke is unquestionably our best and 
wisest teacher. In handling the particular questions of his 
time, he always involves those principles, and brings them 



VI PEEFACE. 

to their practical bearings, where they most " come home 
to the business and bosoms of men." And his pages are 
everywhere bright with the highest and purest political 
morality, while at the same time he is a consummate mas- 
ter in the intellectual .charms and graces of authorship. 
"Webster, also, is abundantly at home in those common 
principles : his giant grasp wields them with the ease and 
grace of habitual mastery: therewithal he is by far the 
ablest and clearest expounder we have of what may be 
termed the specialties of our American political system. 
So that you can hardly touch any point of our stupendous 
National Fabric, but that he will approve himself at once 
your wisest and your pleasantest teacher. In fact, I hardly 
know "which to commend most, his political wisdom, his 
ponderous logic, the perfect manliness of his style, or the 
high-souled enthusiasm which generally animates and tones 
his discourse ; the latter qualities being no less useful to 
inspire the student with a noble patriotic ardour than the 
former to arm him with sound and fruitful instruction. 
And so, between Burke and Webster, if the selections are 
made with but tolerable judgment, our youth may here 
learn a good deal of what it highly concerns them to 
know as citizens of a free republican State. 

I am not unmindful that, in thus placing Webster along- 
side of Burke, I may be inviting upon him a trial some- 
thing too severe. I do not by any means regard him as the 
peer of Burke; but it is my deliberate judgment that he 
comes nearer to Burke, and can better stand a fair com- 
parison with him, than any other English-speaking states- 
man of modern times. In pure force of intellect, Burke 
was no doubt something ahead of him, and was far beyond 
him in strength and richness of imagination ; for he was, 
as Johnson described him, emphatically "a constellation ": 
on the other hand, Burke's tempestuous sensibility some- 
times whirled him into exorbitancies, where Webster's cooler 
temperament and more balanced make-up would probably 
have held him firm in his propriety. And Webster, though 
far above imitating any man, abounds in marks of a very 



PREFACE. Vll 

close and diligent study of Burke. It seems specially- 
noteworthy, that he was thoroughly at one with Burke in 
an intense aversion to political metaphysics, and to those 
speculative abstractions which, if attempted to be carried 
into the practical work of government, can never do any 
thing but mischief. 

In regard to the selections from Bacon, I there had 
nothing to distract my choice, or cause me any embarrass- 
ment. The settled verdict of mankind points at once to 
his Essays as a book which no liberally-educated person 
can rightly afford to be unacquainted with. Other of his 
works may better illustrate the vast height and compass of 
his genius ; but they are, for the most part, little suited, or 
rather quite unsuited to the ends of this volume. But his 
Essays everywhere touch the common interests and con- 
cerns of human life ; they are freighted to the utmost with 
solid practical sense; and as specimens of moral and civil 
discourse it is hardly possible to overstate the wisdom and 
beauty of them. Of the fifty-eight Essays, I here give 
thirty ; and I was nowise at a loss which to select. Nor, 
had my space been ever so large, should I have greatly 
cared to include any more of them. 

I have a good right to know that Bacon and Burke are 
among our very best authors for the use to which this 
volume looks. The Essays, the Letter to the Sheriffs of 
Bristol, and the Speech to the Electors of Bristol, I have 
been using several years, with good effect, in some of my 
own classes. There are many other portions of Burke 
equally good, and some still better, for such use; which, 
however, were not to be had in a practicable shape. And I 
have long been wishing to make a like use of Webster, but 
have never been able to do so, because none of his works 
were at hand in a suitable form. I feel right well assured 
that he will amply reward the same study, and that, if not 
so good in himself as the other two, he has some obvious 
points of preference in the education of American youth. 
Nor can I think it fitting or just to be using only such 
fragments of him as are commonly served up for mere 



Vlll PEEFACE. 

exercises in declamation and elocution : in fact, I have little 
faith in such exercises, save in connection with the attain- 
ment of something higher and better. For manner, to be 
really good, must be held subordinate to matter ; and the 
pursuit of manner for its own sake, or even as a paramount 
aim, can hardly fail to result in a very bad manner. I 
submit that the art, or the habit, of pronouncing nothing 
in such a way as to make it pass for something grand, is 
not so little known among us as to call for special encour- 
agement and aid by books and teachers. At present we 
seem to be in no little danger of educating people into a 
good deal more tongue than mind. 

In conclusion, it may not be amiss to say that this vol- 
ume is not designed for any "auction of popularity." The 
thought of popular favour has had no part or lot in the 
preparation of it. For I know right well that, in prepara- 
tions of this sort, a great many people altogether prefer 
something which may seem to teach a little of every thing, 
while really giving no true instruction whatever. So the 
most I venture to hope for is, that the book may commend 
itself to the judicious; the number of whom, I fear, is not 
large enough to make up any thing like a popularity. And 
this leads me to remark that our young students, it seems 
to me, can be better occupied than with the transient, shift- 
ing literary fashions and popularities of the day. I am 
not myself a very aged man, yet I am old enough to have 
outlived two generations of "immortal" writers who have 
already sunk into oblivion ; and of the popular authors 
now living probably very few will be heard of thirty years 
hence. Surely, in forming the mind and taste of the young, 
it is better to use authors who have already lived long enough 
to afford some guaranty that they may survive the next 
twenty years. 

Boston, January, 1876. 



CONTENTS 



BURKE. 

Page. 

Sketch of his Life . . 1 

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol 9 

How to retain the Colonies 47 

The People of New England 49 

Speech on Economical Reform .... . . 50 

Obedience to Instructions . . . . . . . 113 

Speech to the Electors of Bristol ...... 115 

Growth of the American Trade 152 

Character of George Grenville ...... 154 

Lord Chatham and Charles Townshend . . . . 155 

State of Things in France . . . .■'•""•. . .159 

The Revolution in France 163 

Liberty in the Abstract . 190 

Freedom as an Inheritance 192 

The Revolutionary Third Estate 198 

The Rights of Men 204 

Abuse of History 207 

English Toleration 209 

How a Wise Statesman proceeds 211 

True Principles of Reform 213 

Fanaticism of Liberty 217 

The Ethics of Vanity 219 

The Old and the New Whigs . 226 

A Letter to a Noble Lord 248 

France at War with Humanity 285 

Fanatical Atheism 296 

How to deal with Jacobin France 298 

ix 



X CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Desolation of the Carnatic 299 

Unlawfulness of Arbitrary Power 307 

Cruelties of Debi Sing 311 

Impeachment of Hastings 315 

Justice and Kevenge 318 

Appeal for Judgment upon Hastings 321 

" The Labouring Poor " 325 



WEBSTER. 



Sketch of his Life 326 

Speech in Reply to Hayne 335 

Blessings of the Constitution 385 

Presidential Nullification . . - 395 

The Spoils to the Victors 402 

Fraudulent Party Outcries . . . .... . 407 

The Position of Mr. Calhoun . . . . - . . ,411 

South Carolina Nullification 412 

The Presidential Protest 421 

The Character of Washington 461 

Alexander Hamilton 473 

First Settlement of New England 475 

The First Century of New England 483 

The Second Century of New England .... 489 

Appeal against the Slave-Trade 492 

Bunker-Hill Monument begun 494 

Bunker-Hill Monument finished ...... 498 

Adams in the Congress of 1776 500 

Bight Use of Learning 505 

The Murder of Mr. White 506 

Character of Lord Byron 511 

Character of Judge Story 512 

Religion as an Element of Greatness 515 

Each to interpret the Law for himself .... 516 

Irredeemable Paper . 518 

Benefits of the Credit System 521 



CONTENTS. XI 

Page. 

Abuse of Executive Patronage 526 

Philanthropic Love of Power 527 

The Spirit of Disunion .529 

Importance of the Navy . . 532 

The Log Cabin 533 

Speaking for the Union 535 

Obedience to Instructions 536 

Peaceable Secession . . . . . . . . 537 

Standing upon the Constitution 540 

Appeal for the Union 543 



BACON. 

Sketch of his Life 553 

From the Essays : 

Of Truth 561 

Of Death 563 

Of Unity in Religion ....... 565 

Of Revenge 569 

Of Adversity . . . . 570 

Of Parents and Children 572 

Of Marriage and Single Life 573 

Of Great Place . . .575 

Of Boldness 578 

Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature . . .579 

Of Atheism 581 

Of Superstition . . .584 

Of Travel 586 

Of Wisdom for a Man's Self 587 

Of Innovations . . . . . . . . 589 

Of Seeming Wise 590 

Of Friendship 591 

Of Expense 597 

Of Suspicion 598 

Of Discourse 599 

Of Riches 601 



Xll CONTENTS. 



From the Essays : 

Of Nature in Men 604 

Of Custom and Education 605 

Of Youth and Age 607 

Of Beauty 608 

Of Deformity . . .609 

Of Studies 610 

Of Praise . . . . 611 

Of Judicature . . . . ... . 613 

Of Anger 616 

Prom the Advancement op Learning : 

Discredits of Learning 618 

Dignity and Value of Knowledge . . . .624 

Miscellaneous ......... 632 



Page. 






EDMUND BURKE 

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 



Edmund Burke, the greatest of political philosophers, was born in the 
City of Dublin on the 12th of January. The day of his birth we learn 
from a letter of his to Lord Rockingham, dated January 12, 1775, in which 
he says, " My birth-day ; I need not say how long ago." But what was so 
well known then stands in some doubt now. The time of his entering col- 
lege is easily ascertained ; and from the registry then made of his age it 
seems probable that the year of his birth was 1728 ; but this is somewhat 
uncertain; it may have been 1729. His father, Richard Burke, was a 
respectable attorney, of good practice, but of a rather irritable and unhap- 
py temper. Of course he was a Protestant, else he could not have been a 
member of the Dublin Bar. His wife, the mother of all his children, was 
Mary Nagle, and she and all her family were devout Roman Catholics. 
Of their children only four grew to maturity, — three sons, Garret, Ed- 
mund, and Richard, and one daughter, Juliana. The sons were educated 
in the religion of their father ; the daughter in that of her mother. 

In his earlier years, Edmund's health was frail and delicate, and much 
of his childhood was spent with his mother's kindred, the Nagles, at Cas- 
tletown Roche, in the south of Ireland. As these people were of a pleasant 
and amiable temper, he is said to have been much happier with them than 
at his father's house. There it was that his great, warm, manly heart had 
much of its best early nursing ; thus rightly predisposing him to be, what 
he afterwards became, the untiring champion of the oppressed Roman 
Catholics of his native land against the dreadful bigotry and intolerance 
of the then governing classes of Ireland. 

In May, 1741, Burke, then in his fourteenth year, went to Ballitore, 
some twenty-eight miles south of Dublin, where he spent the next two 
years in the school of Abraham Shackleton, a most intelligent, upright, 
and amiable Quaker, for whom he ever after entertained the deepest respect 
and affection. There his preparation for college was made; and, what 
was still better, there he formed a life-long friendship with his good teach- 
er's son, Richard Shackleton, whose noble and benevolent character was 
thenceforth enshrined among his dearest memories. As Burke was him- 
self a most lovely character, the love he bore the Shackletons was heartily 
reciprocated by them. 

In the Spring of 1743, Burke entered Trinity College, Dublin. Though 
well grounded in the classics, especially in Latin, he did not particularly 
distinguish himself in the prescribed studies, his passion for general read- 
ing being so strong as to divert him overmuch from them. However, he 
took his regular degree in 1748, and not long after set out for London, to 
engage in the study of the law, his name having been entered in the Mid- 
dle Temple some time before. He continued nominally a Templar for 
three years, and then threw up the study of the law altogether. In truth, 
he never did, and probably never could, draw his mind down closely to 
that study : the instincts of his genius were against it ; and surely no man 
ever had those instincts in greater strength. His most discursive and most 

1 



2 BUKKE. 

comprehensive intellect could not possibly set up its rest in so circum- 
scribed a field. Daring that period, however, he was any thing but idle. 
His prodigious mental hunger kept foraging far and wide in miscellaneous 
reading: besides, he spent much time in travelling about the country, con- 
versing variously and minutely with English life, face to face, and storing 
his mind with first-hand knowledge in all matters of trade, commerce, and 
manufactures. 

All this was highly displeasing to Burke's father, whose heart was set 
upon having his son bred to the law. As he now either stopped the sup- 
plies or dealt them grudgingly and sparely, Burke began to turn his 
thoughts to literature for the means of living. He had already made ac- 
quaintance with some of the wits of London ; and all through his life he 
cultivated habitudes more or less with that class of men ; though the un- 
happy foibles so common among them never found any thing, apparently, 
in his nature to stick upon. It is said that at this time he was a frequent, 
not to say constant, attendant at the Drury-Lane theatre ; and it is certain 
that with David Garrick, the great actor of the time, he formed a friend- 
ship which continued till the death of Garrick. 

A few years before, Lord Bolingbroke had died, leaving some of his 
boldest deistical and freethinking speculations in manuscript. In the 
Spring of 1754, these were ushered before the public with a grand flourish 
of trumpets, as something that was going to change the intellectual and 
moral face of the world. They had their brief turn of popularity; the lit- 
erary fashion-mongers of the hour being all agog with them. Whatever 
may have been thought of the author's philosophy, he was generally held 
to have beaten all former writers in the use of English : even Lord Chester- 
field and William Pitt concurred with the rest in pronouncing his style 
inimitable. Burke was not at all taken with the Bolingbroke furor; he 
disliked him exceedingly both as a thinker and as a man : in fact, Boling- 
broke might almost be described as, in philosophy and politics, his "pet 
aversion." Accordingly, his first literary performance was a philosophic 
satire on his lordship's posthumous lucubrations, which appeared in 1756, 
with the title, "A Vindication of Natural Society; or, a VieAv of the Miser- 
ies and Evils arising to Mankind from every species of Artificial Society; 

in a Letter to Lord , by a late Noble Writer." This was meant as a 

reductio ad absurdum of the Bolingbroke philosophy, by showing that the 
same principles and the same mode of reasoning, which Bolingbroke had 
used against revealed Religion, would hold equally good against all civil- 
ized society among mankind. But the irony was so well concealed, and 
the imitation of Bolingbroke's style so perfect, that the pamphlet was 
generally ascribed at once to his lordship's pen. 

Burke's next literary undertaking was his treatise On the Sublime and 
Beautiful, published a few months after the forecited work. This at once 
placed him high among the leading authors of the time : Hume praised it; 
Johnson thought it a model of philosophical criticism. A second edition 
was soon called for, and came out considerably enlarged and improved, 
with an excellent Preface added, and also a Discourse on Taste. The work 
is indeed written with great ability and elegance, and in a style of philo- 
sophic calmness well suited to the theme. But the whole subject is dis- 
cussed on the low, mechanical notions then prevalent, and the theory of it 
has long been justly discarded as monstrous and absurd : it simply drags 
the entire body of poetry down into an earthy region where the soul of 
poetry cannot possibly live. 

At this period, we have an episode in Burke's life, which is highly inter- 
esting, as illustrating his native generosity of disposition. A gifted and 
heroic young Armenian, named Joseph Emin, who had been in Calcutta, 
and had rherc gathered some knowledge of the English language and char- 
acter, made his appearance in London, with his heart full of noble and 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 3 

patriotic aspirations for the political regeneration of his native land. He 
was burning with desire to learn the arts and ways of European civiliza- 
tion, and thus qualify himself for the great designs he was meditating in 
behalf of his beloved Armenia. Burke, while walking one day in St. 
James' Park with a gentleman who already knew Emin, accidentally met 
him and was introduced to him. His penetrating eye at once saw the gen- 
ius of the man, and his big warm heart was equally prompt to sympathize 
with the man's heroic aspirations. The story is much too long for any 
thing more than a passing glance at it here : suffice it to say, that Burke, 
then in the ardour of youthful genius, earnestly espoused the stranger's 
cause, and, though poor himself, offered to share his last guinea with the 
brave Armenian. He found some employment for him on liberal terms, 
lent him books, opened his doors to him, gave him advice, and did all he 
could to further his plans. 

Early in 1757, Burke was married to Mary Jane Nugent, daughter to 
Christopher Nugent, M.D., of Bath, who afterwards removed to London. 
Dr. Nugent was himself also a native of Ireland ; and the marriage proved 
eminently happy in every respect: nothing, indeed, can well be conceived 
more noble and beautiful than the great statesman's wedded life ; for in 
his home Burke was one of the loveliest of men, whilst his wife also was 
one of the loveliest of women. She was not, we are told, what is called a 
regular beauty ; but was ever sweet and gentle in her disposition, and inex- 
pressibly graceful and winning in her manners. Stern men of the world 
spoke of her as all that was amiable among women, and the most discrim- 
inating of her own sex gave her similar praise. As her sole ambition was 
to make her husband happy in his home, she was so quiet and retiring in 
her ways, that few of his friends had any acquaintance with her, except 
those who habitually visited at his house. Ever soothing his natural irrita- 
bility, standing by his side in hours of despondency, cheering him in pov- 
erty, nursing him in sickness, consoling him in sorrow, — such was her 
way of showing "how divine a thing a woman may be made." 

With this new responsibility on his hands, Burke now had enough to 
do; for he was receiving but little from his father, and Dr. Nugent, though 
in heart and will all that a good father-in-law could be, was by no means 
rich. His next literary work was An Account of the European Settlements in 
America, published in the Spring of 1757, and again, Avith improvements, 
in 1758. This was soon followed by his Essay towards an Abridgment of 
English History. 

In 1758, while Pitt, as Prime Minister, was carrying all before him, and 
was touching every fibre of old England into resurgent life, Burke set on 
foot the Annual Register. This was meant to embrace a review of the his- 
tory, politics, and literature of each year. The first volume, published in 
1759, gave a complete history of the war, then in progress, from its begin- 
ning to the close of 1758. The undertaking Avas entirely successful. The 
Annual Register soon became, and still remains, a standard authority as a 
political, military, and literary chronicle of the time. At first, Burke, it is 
said, did all the Avriting for it; and he continued to do the better part of it 
for many years, till his time and strength Avere all dnwn off to more im- 
portant labours. He himself, hoAvever, reaped no great pecuniary advan- 
tage from it, receiving only £100 for each A'olume. 

In the Spring of 1761, the Earl of Halifax Avent to Ireland as Lord Lieu- 
tenant, with William Gerard Hamilton, commonly called Single-speech 
Hamilton, for his Chief Secretary. Burke had for some time been on 
terms of intimacy Avirh Hamilton ; and he noAv attended him to Ireland, in 
what capacity is not altogether clear, but probably as a sort of confidential 
adviser. This AA'as the first that Burke had to do Avith public affairs. 
While he Avas in Dublin Avith Hamilton, his father died. He was noAv in a 
position to do something for the relief of his oppressed native land, and he 






4 BURKE. 

made the best use of his opportunities to that end. Hamilton retained his 
office till 1764, when he was dismissed, and Burke returned with him to 
England. Meanwhile Hamilton had secured for himself a very lucrative 
sinecure as Superintendent of the Irish finances, which he held for twenty 
years. He also procured a pension of £300 a-year from the Irish treasury 
for his confidential friend. Burke kept up his connection with Hamilton 
some time longer, till at length Hamilton's patronage became so oppressive, 
that he separated from him in disgust, and even refused the pension. 

Burke was now thirty-seven years old, and, though holding no recog- 
nized official place, had served a sort of apprenticeship in public life. Still 
he had no means of support but what the Annual Register brought him, 
with such help as Dr. Nugent could afford. Some years before, his older 
brother, Garret, had inherited a farm in Ireland from a maternal relative. 
In April, 1765, he died unmarried, and the inheritance fell to Edmund as 
the next in succession. The estate is said to have been worth about £6000. 
Meanwhile the Crown and Parliament had got under full headway in that 
fatal course of legislation which was to end in the loss of the American 
Colonies. Burke watched all these misdoings with the keenest scrutiny, 
and was free and outspoken in condemnation of them. At length, in the 
Summer of 176f>, the Grenville government broke down utterly, and the 
Marquess of Rockingham was called to the helm. The new Whig Ministry 
was formed early in July ; and a few days afterward Burke became acquainted 
with the Marquess, and was soon selected by him for his private secretary. 
Thus began a very noble friendship, both political and personal, which 
continued, without a moment of coldness, till the death of Rockingham. 

On the 26th of December, 1765, Burke was elected member of Parlia- 
ment for Wendover. This was a small, close borough, under the influence 
of Lord Verney. William Burke, a kinsman of Edmund's, though in 
what degree is unknown, was to have had the election ; but he cheerfully 
withdrew in favour of his great relative, and his patron, Lord Verney, 
readily consented to the change, and had William returned for another 
constituency that was also under his influence. On the 14th of January, 
Burke took his seat in the House among the supporters of the Ministry. 
Fourteen days later, he made his first speech, and was at once so far master 
of the situation as to hold the close attention of the great Pitt, who highly 
commended the effort. The question was on receiving a petition from the 
American Colonies. Even some of the Ministers opposed the reception on 
the ground of its being subversive of the authority of the House ; but 
Burke justly urged that the offering of such a petition was itself an ac- 
knowledgment of the House's jurisdiction. On the 3d of February, he 
spoke again, with still greater success, filling the House with wonder and 
astonishment. This was in favour of what is called the Declaratory Act, 
which affirmed the unlimited power of the Crown and Parliament over the 
Colonies, — a doctrine always maintained by Burke, against Pitt and a few 
other members. The Rockingham policy was, to affirm in full the impe- 
rial power of Great Britain, and then repeal all the offensive Acts and re- 
dress all the actual grievances under which the Colonies were suffering. 
On the 21st of February, the question of repealing the Stamp Act came 
up, when he spoke the third time, and again won the applause of the 
House by the originality and freshness of his arguments and his style of 
putting them. He had already sprung up, as at one bound, to the highest 
rank of parliamentary orators. And from this time onwards, though, from 
his thorough mastery of every subject that came before the House, and 
from his overflowing fulness of thought, he probably spoke too often, it is 
certain that no man ever held that stormy audience more completely in his 
hand. It has indeed been often said that his speaking served as a dinner- 
bell to the House; but this saying arose at a later time, when a large ma- 
jority of the members were naturally impatient of hearing such clear and 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 5 

cogent reasons against the course they had made up their minds to pursue. 
But, great as was his eloquence, his wisdom was greater. With the auro- 
ral splendours of his genius were ever mingled words of prophetic insight; 
and the final result of those disastrous years only approved how truly it 
had been his lot to " prophesy to ears that would not hear." 

The Rockingham Ministry continued in power till the end of July, 1766. 
Though their policy was fast healing all the troubles brought on by previous 
misgovernment, it was so distasteful to the King, the Court, and especially 
to Chatham, that they were forced to resign, thus breaking off in the midst 
of their good work. Then followed the piebald administration of Chatham, 
when the worst features of the former policy were iatally revived. This 
Ministry soon broke down, and gave place to the long administration of 
Lord North, during most of which Burke kept up a resolute but ineffectual 
struggle against the wrong-headedness of the government. 

Meanwhile he purchased an estate called Gregories, comprising about 
six hundred acres of good land, lying near the town of Beaconsfield, and 
some twenty-four miles from London.* The mansion, which was some- 
thing of a palace in size and appearance, he fitted up in a style of modest 
splendour, not unsuited to the high circles, social, literary, and political, 
in which he moved. Here he settled down with his family, in the Spring 
of 1768, to engage in his favourite pursuit of agriculture; his dearest wish 
having long been to take permanent root in English soil, and become the 
founder of a family. This was henceforth his country home, and a beauti- 
ful home it was too ; here he spent so much of his time as could be spared 
from his parliamentary duties, which he never neglected ; here all his do- 
mestic happiness, all his private joys were centred. 

As the doors of Parliament were then closed against the public, and no 
reporters were admitted, of course Burke could not from his seat in the 
House reach the ear of the nation at large. For this purpose he had re- 
course to the pen. A Mr. Knox, acting as the mouth-piece of Grenville, 
had put forth a pamphlet entitled The Present State of the Nation, endeav- 
ouring to show that the country was going to rack and ruin from the aban- 
donment of the Grenville policy. The work would have passed out of all 
remembrance long ago, but for an elaborate reply which Burke set forth in 
1769, under the title of Observations on a Late Publication, &c. This was 
such a piece of political writing as England had never before seen ; full of 
profound and comprehensive statesmanship, displaying a thorough knowl- 
edge of every subject that came within its range, and anticipating many 
of the most important conclusions which Adam Smith published some 
seven years later in his great work on the Wealth of Nations. This was 
followed, in 1770, by a still greater work entitled Thoughts on the Cause of 
the Present Discontents, which, though dealing with an occasional question, 
abounds in matter of universal application, and is among our best text- 
books of statesmanship for all times. 

Of Burke's many labours in Parliament, not the least memorable was 
in connection with a long and hard struggle for the freedom of the Press. 
The reasons were growing stronger every day why the proceedings of the 
two Houses should be freely laid before the public; but the House of Com- 
mons insisted on treating such publication as a breach of privilege, and 
went to waging an ill-timed war on certain printers. Burke took the lead 
in this contest; which was finally brought to a close in 1771 by an indirect 
but effectual assertion of the Liberty of the Press as the daily chronicler of 
public events, including the debates in Parliament. Thus he bore a leading 
part in giving birth to what is aptly called the Fourth Estate. After the 
measure was carried, Burke, foreseeing the vast consequences to flow from 
it, uttered the remark, "Posterity will bless the pertinacity of that day." 

Burke had been twice elected "member for Wendover through the influ- 
ence of Lord Verney. But when, in 1774, the time came for a third elec- 



6 BURKE. 



tion, Lord Verney's affairs were so deeply embarrassed, that he had 
seek out some men of wealth for the seats in his gift. Thereupon Lord 
Rockingham placed his own borough of Malton at Burke's disposal. Just 
as the election was over, a deputation came on from Bristol, earnestly re- 
questing him to be one of the candidates for that city. As all his friend3 
agreed it were much better he should be one of the two representatives for 
that large and influential constituency, he posted off at once to attend the 
canvass there, and was elected. 

All through these years, the American question held perhaps the fore- 
most place in the parliamentary debates. Though it was almost hopeless 
to struggle against the course of the Ministry, Burke kept up his champi- 
onship of the Colonies. Two of his great speeches in this behalf, that on 
American Taxation, and that on Conciliation with America, delivered April 
19, 1774, and March 22, 1775, were carefully written out and published by 
himself. Of his many other speeches on the subject, only a few notes and 
fragments have been preserved, and room cannot here be spared for com- 
ment on them. One of them, however, it would be hardly right to pass 
over. On the 6th of February, 1778, he made a motion for papers touch- 
ing the employment of the Indians in the war, and spoke upwards of three 
hours in support of the motion. One of his strongest points was in reply 
to the assertion that the Colonists were ready to employ them. He urged 
that, if the Americans used the Indians as allies, they could only set them 
upon the King's disciplined troops,who were able to defend themselves ; while 
to employ them against the Colonists, w r as abandoning unprotected women 
and children to the cruelties of the war-Avhoop and the scalping-knife, wher- 
ever those saA r ages pursued their career. The galleries of the House were 
closed that day, and no trustworthy import of the speech was made ; but all 
who heard it agreed that it surpassed any of his previous efforts ; and Sir 
George Savile, a most competent judge, pronounced it the noblest triumph 
of eloquence within human memory. At Burke's ludicrous parody on 
Burgoyne's proclamation to the Indians, even Lord North himself was 
almost bursting with laughter ; while, in the more pathetic parts, tears like 
those which rolled down the iron cheeks of Pluto suffused the grim features 
of Colonel Barre, who, in his military career, had himself experienced the 
horrors of Indian warfare. He urged Burke to publish the speech, and de- 
clared that, if this were done, he Avould go himself and nail it up on every 
church-door in the kingdom beside the royal Proclamation for a general 
fast on the 27th of the month. And Governor Johnstone congratulated 
the Ministry on haA-ing had the galleries closed that day, lest the public 
feelings should have been Avrought up to such a pitch as might have been 
fatal to the lives of the Ministers. 

On the final triumph of the American cause in 1782, the Ministry of 
Lord North came to an end, and the Marquess of Rockingham Avas again 
called to the office of Prime Minister. Burke then became Paymaster of 
the Forces, but had no seat in the Cabinet. Up to that time, the Paymas- 
ter, besides his regular salary, had had the use of the money appropriated 
to the military service. This gave him a very large income, sometimes not 
less than .£40,000 a-year. In accordance with a plan Avhich he had him- 
self proposed some two years before, Burke iioav insisted on a total reform 
in his department, accepting only the regular salary, the use of the money 
to go to the service of the State. But the death of Rockingham on the 
30th of June following put an end to the Ministry. The very day before 
the Marquess died, he had a codicil added to his will, expressly cancelling 
every paper that might be found containing an acknoAvledgment of debt 
due to him from his " admirable friend Edmund Burke." How far his 
bounty to Burke had extended, is not precisely knoAvn ; but it is supposed 
to have reached the sum of about £30,000. 

Perhaps I should here remark that the people of Bristol became dissatis- 



1 to 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 7 

fied with Burke on account of his persevering efforts to lighten the bur- 
dens and oppressions of his native Ireland. So, in the fall of 1780, after 
being their representative for six years, he found the current there so 
strong against him, that he withdrew from the canvass ; but was forthwith 
returned again for Malton, which borough he continued to represent dur- 
ing the rest of his twenty-eight years in the House of Commons. 

The Spring of 1783 witnessed the formation of what was called the Coa- 
lition Ministry, which was composed of men of several parties. Burke 
again became Paymaster, still without a seat in the Cabinet. But the 
Ministry proved an ill-starred arrangement, and soon went to pieces ; and 
Burke's greatest political mistake was the part he took in forming it. 

Some time before this, he began to interest himself deeply in the wrongs 
of India. His sensibilities, always most keenly alive to the sufferings of 
others, got wrought up to an extraordinary pitch in this behalf. On the 
30th of July, 1784, he brought the matter before Parliament, and in the 
course of that day made no less than four speeches, ever growing more ve- 
hement as he went on, and in each denouncing woe and vengeance on the 
nation which allowed such iniquities to go unpunished ; and he made a 
solemn oath before the House that the wrongs done to humanity in the 
East should be avenged on the authors of them. For several yeai-s he gave 
his whole soul to this cause, prosecuting it with incredible industry and en- 
ergy. All through the arraignment and trial of Warren Hastings, which 
lasted some ten years, he was the leader and the master-spirit. It is true, 
both his greatness of genius and his rectitude of purpose were sometimes 
not a little obscured by his infirmities of temper : in his raptures of pro- 
phetic fury, he was sometimes the pity of his friends and the derision 
of his enemies ; but time has amply pi-oved that his folly was wiser than 
the wisdom of all who maligned or opposed him. The trial ended, to be 
sure, in a formal acquittal of Hastings. This made his long labour seem 
a failure; and he himself so considered it. But it was in effect a grand 
success ; for it wrought a silent but thorough change in the government of 
India, and may be justly regarded as having saved the British empire in 
the East. 

From the Summer of 1784 to that of 1789 Burke was probably the most 
unpopular man in England. At every turn he was met by the most en- 
venomed hostility ; from week to week he was hunted down by the most 
unrelenting obloquy. This was indeed partly owing to his own intemper- 
ance of conduct, for his great warm heart kept boiling at the cruelties and 
iniquities he had undertaken to expose ; but it was chiefly because he held 
himself unflinchingly to the task of speaking odious truth. At length, the 
outbreak of the French Revolution, in 1789, gave things a new turn, and 
brought about an entire recast of parties in England. Burke seems for a 
while to have been struck dumb by that tremendous social and political 
whirlwind; but he watched its progress with the utmost concentration of 
mind. Early in February, 1790, the subject came up incidentally in the 
House of Commons, when Burke astounded both the House and the na- 
tion by his strong declarations of judgment. Up to this time, he and 
Charles Fox had been fast political friends ; — I say political, for Fox was 
too profligate in his morals for the personal friendship of such a man as 
Burke. But Fox and the younger portion of the Whigs were now whirled 
away with the new revolutionary enthusiasm. A most decided and incura- 
ble rupture between Fox and Burke was the consequence. As things in 
France kept growing on from bad to worse, Burke's feelings got so wrought 
up, that he declared he would break with his dearest friends, and join 
hands with his bitterest foes, on that question. In short, his great mind, 
through all its faculties, was fired into extraordinary activity on that all- 
absorbing theme. A French gentleman, whose acquaintance he had made 
some time before, requested an expression of his judgment on the doings in 



8 BURKE. 



France. This seems to have kindled and started in him a regular train 
thought; and the result appeared in his Reflections on the Revolution in 
France, published in the Fall of 1790. This marvellous production carried 
all before it, and the name of Edmund Burke suddenly became greater and 
more powerful than it had ever been. It was the theme of every tongue ; 
hardly any thing else was talked of or read ; edition after edition was called 
for; and thirty thousand copies were soon in the hands of the pubiic. Nor 
was its effect confined to England; "all Europe rung from side to side" 
Avith the fame of it. 

From this time forward his powers were mainly concentrated on the same 
great theme, the opposition to him being of just the right kind and degree 
to keep his mind in a steady glow. His Appeal from the New to the Old 
Whigs, his Letter to a Noble Lord, his four Letters on a Regicide Peace, and 
several other papers, were the fruits of this most discursive and far-sighted 
inspiration : in fact, he may almost be said to have expired with his pen in 
hand, tracing out some branch of what he conceived to be England's duty 
and interest in the awful crisis that had arisen. 

In July, 1794, Burke retired finally from Parliament, and his son Rich- 
ard, then thirty-six years old, and the only survivor of two children, was 
elected to succeed him as member for Malton. This was an occasion of 
great joy to the father ; but, alas ! that joy was soon turned to sorrow. On 
the 2d of August, Richard died. This event was a perfect surprise to his 
parents ; who, though his health had long been delicate, were quite unpre- 
pared for his death. Young Burke was a man of great promise and spot- 
less character: his native gifts were of a high order; his attainments were 
large ; and every thing about him was solid, except his physical constitu- 
tion : he was the pride of his father's heart, the delight of his father's eyes ; 
and probably his gifts and virtues were somewhat magnified by parental 
partiality. The shock was quite too much for Burke, and he never recov- 
ered from it : he was literally overwhelmed with grief, and remained to the 
hour of his own death utterly unconsolable. The last two of his Letters on 
a Regicide Peace were written under a sense of impending death ; and he 
expired on the morning of Sunday, July 9, 1797, his last breath being 
spent in blessing those who were about him. He died "in the confidence 
of a certain faith, in the comfort of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope." 
Dr. Laurence, who was present, tells us that "his end was suited to the. 
simple greatness of his mind, every way unaffected, without levity, without 
ostentation, full of natural grace and dignity." 

Burke's life, both public and private, was without a stain : his goodness 
of heart, his beauty of character, were in full measure with his greatness of 
intellect: his greatest pleasure was in being kind to such as needed kind- 
ness, and especially in lending a helping hand to struggling and unrecog- 
nised genius and merit : James Barry the painter-artist and George Crabbe 
the poet owed their deliverance from suffering and obscurity to his discrim- 
inating benevolence : Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Goldsmith, Lang- 
ton, and his other fellow-members of the celebrated Club, loved and hon- 
oured him deeply. In 1844, when his Correspondence was published, Lord 
Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, who, sympathizing with the Holland- 
House Whigs, had always been wont to disparage Burke, spoke of him as 
follows : " The greatest and most accomplished intellect that England has 
produced for centuries ; and of a noble and lovable nature." 

Burke's relative place in English literature is not altogether certain. Of 
course Shakespeare is, beyond all comparison, first; but it is something 
doubtful whether the second place belongs to Burke or Bacon. Intellect- 
ually, the two have strong points of resemblance; there, however, the like- 
ness* ends : for Burke had not a tinge or shade of meanness in his composi- 
tion ; his nobleness of character was every way commensurate with his 
strength and splendour of genius. 



nof 



EDMUND BURKE 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 1 

Gentlemen: I have the honour of sending you the two last 
Acts which have been passed with regard to the troubles in 
America. These Acts are similar to all the rest which have 
been made on the same subject. They operate by the same 
principle, and they are derived from the very same policy. I 
think they complete the number of this sort of statutes to nine. 
It affords no matter for very pleasing reflection to observe that 
our subjects diminish as our laws increase. 

If I have the misfortune of differing with some of my fellow- 
citizens on this great and arduous subject, it is no small conso- 
lation to me that I do not differ from you. With you I am per- 
fectly united. We are heartily agreed in our detestation of a 
civil war. We have ever expressed the most unqualified disap- 
probation of all the steps which have led to it, and of all those 
which tend to prolong it. And I have no doubt that we feel 
exactly the same emotions of grief and shame on all its misera- 
ble consequences, whether they appear on the one side or the 
other, in the shape of victories or defeats, of captures made 
from the English on the Continent or from the English in these 
islands, of legislative regulations which subvert the liberties of 
our brethren, or which undermine our own. 

Of the first of these statutes (that for the letter of marque) I 
shall say little. 2 Exceptionable as it may be, and as I think it 
is in some particulars, it seems the natural, perhaps necessary, 
result of the measures we have taken and the situation we are 
in. The other (for a partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus) 

1 The full title of this paper as originally published is "A Letter to John 
Farr and John Harris, Esqrs., Sheriffs of the City of Bristol, on the Affairs of 
America. 1777." 

2 A letter of marque is, in effect, a special commission granted by the govern- 
ment of a belligerant State to the commander of a vessel, authorizing him to 
capture and take possession of any ships belonging to the enemy wherever he 
may find them. Of course seizures so made, being sanctioned by international 
law, are not subject to the charge of piracy. 



10 



BURKE. 



appears to me of a much deeper malignity. 3 During its progress 
through the House of Commons, it has been amended, so as to 
express, more distinctly than at first it did, the avowed senti- 
ments of those who framed it ; and the main ground of my ex- 
ception to it is, because it does express, and does carry into 
execution, purposes which appear to me contradictory to all 
the principles, not only of the constitutional policy of Great 
Britain, but even of that species of hostile justice which no as- 
perity of war wholly extinguishes in the minds of a civilized 
people. 

It seems to have in view two capital objects: the first, to ena- 
ble administration to confine, as long as it shall think proper, 
those whom that Act is pleased to qualify by the name of pirates. 
Those so qualified I understand to be the commanders and mari- 
ners of such privateers and ships of war belonging to the colo- 
nies as in the course of this unhappy contest may fall into the 
hands of the Crown. They are therefore to be detained in prison, 
under the criminal description of piracy, to a future trial and 
ignominious punishment, whenever circumstances shall make 
it convenient to execute vengeance on them, under the colour 
of that odious and infamous offence. 

To this first purpose of the law I have no small dislike, be- 
cause the Act does not (as all laws and all equitable transactions 
ought to do) fairly describe its object. The persons who make 
a naval war upon us, in consequence of the present troubles, 
may be rebels ; but to call and treat them as pirates is confound- 
ing not only the natural distinction of things, but the order of 
crimes, — which, whether by putting them from a higher part 



3 This famous statute, called Habeas Corpus because writs issued in pursu- 
ance of it formerly began with those two words, was passed in the reign of 
Charles the Second, 1679. It was meant as au effective remedy, and such it 
has proved to be, against arbitrary imprisonment, that is, the punishmeut of 
alleged or imputed crimes, without a trial or a hearing. From a very early pe- 
riod, such imprisonment was indeed unlawful in England; but the servile inge- 
nuity of crown lawyers still found out ways of eluding the law : so that, if the 
King or any of his favorites had a grudge against a person, he could fabricate a 
criminal charge, and have him incarcerated; and there he was, without remedy 
or redress, as he could not bring the question of his guilt or innocence to a trial. 
But, by this Act, a person so held, or his friends, might apply to any one of the 
judges, and on such application the judge was obliged, under heavy penalties, 
to issue his writ requiring the custodian to bring forth the body of the prisoner, 
together with the warrant for committal, into court, that he, the judge, might 
determine of its sufficiency, and either remand the accused to prison, admit him 
to bail, or discharge him, according to the merits of the case. And any officer 
or jailer to whom such writ was directed was also bound, under severe penal- 
ties, to prompt obedience. Thus, among all English-speaking peoples, the Act 
in question stands to this day the main security of personal freedom against op- 
pressive power. 






LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 11 

of the scale to the lower or from the lower to the higher, is 
never done without dangerously disordering the whole frame of 
jurisprudence. Though piracy may be, in the eye of the law, 
a less offence than treason, yet, as both are, in effect, punished 
with the same death, the same forfeiture, and the same corrup- 
tion of blood, I never would take, from any fellow-creature 
whatever, any sort of advantage which he may derive to his 
safety from the pity of mankind, or to his reputation from their 
general feelings, by degrading his offence, when I cannot soften 
his punishment. The general sense of mankind tells me that 
those offences which may possibly arise from mistaken virtue 
are not in the class of infamous actions. Lord Coke, the oracle 
of the English law, conforms to that general sense, where he 
says that "those things which are of the highest criminality 
may be of the least disgrace." The Act prepares a sort of 
masked proceeding, not honourable to the justice of the king- 
dom, and by no means necessary for its safety. I cannot enter 
into it. If Lord Balmerino, in the last rebellion, had driven off 
the cattle of twenty clans, I should have thought it would have 
been a scandalous and low juggle, utterly unworthy of the man- 
liness of an English judicature, to have tried him for felony as 
a stealer of cows. 4 

Besides, I must honestly tell you that I could not vote for, or 
countenance in any way, a statute which stigmatizes with the 
crime of piracy these men whom an Act of Parliament had pre- 
viously put out of the protection of the law. When the legisla- 
ture of this kingdom had ordered all their ships and goods, for 
the mere new-created offence of exercising trade, to be divided 
as a spoil among the seamen of the navy, 5 — to consider the 
necessary reprisal of an unhappy, proscribed, interdicted peo- 
ple, as the crime of piracy, would have appeared, in any other 
legislature than ours, a strain of the most insulting and most 
unnatural cruelty and injustice. I assure you I never remem- 
ber to have heard of any thing like it in any time or country. 

The second professed purpose of the Act is to detain in Eng- 
land for trial those who shall commit high treason in America. 

4 Lord Balmerino was a Scottish nobleman, who took part with Charles Ed- 
ward, commonly called the Pretender, in his attempt to regain the British 
throne. At the battle of Culloden, in 1745, where that attempt was crushed, 
Balmerino was taken prisoner, and was afterwards tried, convicted, and exe- 
cuted/or treason. 

5 By the Act of Parliament here referred to, all the property of Americans, 
whether of ships or goods, on the high seas or in harbour, was declared " to be 
forfeited to the captors, being the officers and crews of his Majesty's ships of 
war." This Act was supplementary to another which had interdicted all trade 
to the colonists, thus making commerce a crime. 



12 BURKE. 






That you may be enabled to enter into the true spirit of the 
present law, it is necessary, Gentlemen, to apprise you that 
there is an Act, made so long ago as in the reign of Henry the 
Eighth, before the existence or thought of any English colonies 
in America, for the trial in this kingdom of treason committed 
out of the realm. In the year 1769 Parliament thought proper 
to acquaint the Crown with their construction of that Act in a 
formal address, wherein they entreated his Majesty to cause 
persons charged with high treason in America to be brought 
into this kingdom for trial. By this Act of Henry the Eighth, 
so construed and so applied, almost all that is substantial and 
beneficial in a trial by jury is taken away from the subject in 
the colonies. This is, however, saying too little ; for to try a 
man under that Act is, in effect, to condemn him unheard. A 
person is brought hither in the dungeon of a ship's hold; thence 
he is vomited into a dungeon on land, loaded with irons, unfur- 
nished with money, unsupported by friends, three thousand 
miles from all means of calling upon or confronting evidence, 
where no one local circumstance that tends to detect perjury 
can possibly be judged of ; — such a person may be executed ac- 
cording to form, but he can never be tried according to justice. 

I therefore could never reconcile myself to the bill I send 
you, which is expressly provided to remove all inconveniences 
from the establishment of a mode of trial which has ever ap- 
peared to me most unjust and most unconstitutional. Ear from 
removing the difficulties which impede the execution of so mis- 
chievous a project, I would heap new difficulties upon it, if it 
were in my power. All the ancient, honest juridical principles 
and institutions of England are so many clogs to check and 
retard the headlong course of violence and oppression. They 
were invented for this one good purpose, that what was not 
just should not be convenient. Convinced of this, I would leave 
things as I found them. The old, cool-headed, general law is 
as good as any deviation dictated by present heat. 

I could see no fair, justifiable expedience pleaded to favour 
this new suspension of the liberty of the subject. If the English 
in the colonies can support the independency to which they 
have been unfortunately driven, I suppose nobody has such a 
fanatical zeal for the criminal justice of Henry the Eighth, that 
he will contend for executions which must be retaliated tenfold 
on his own friends, or who has conceived so strange an idea of 
English dignity as to think the defeats in America compensated 

G The purpose of this old statute was to provide for the trial and punishment, 
in England, of crimes committed at sea, and which must be tried and punished 
in England, or not at all. To apply this Act to the colonists was indeed a mon- 
strous perversion. 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 13 

by the triumphs at Tyburn. 7 If, on the contrary, the colonies 
are reduced to the obedience of the Crown, there must be, under 
that authority, tribunals in the country itself fully competent 
to administer justice on all offenders. But if there are not, and 
that we must suppose a thing so humiliating to our government 
as that all this vast continent should unanimously concur in 
thinking that no ill fortune can convert resistance to the royal 
authority into a criminal act, we may call the effect of our vic- 
tory peace, or obedience, or what we will, but the war is not 
ended; the hostile mind continues in full vigour, and it con- 
tinues under a worse form. If your peace be nothing more than 
a sullen pause from arms, if their quiet be nothing but the med- 
itation of revenge, where-smitten pride smarting from its wounds 
festers into new rancour, neither the Act of Henry the Eighth 
nor its handmaid of this reign will answer any wise end of policy 
or justice. For, if the bloody fields which they saw and felt 
are not sufficient to subdue the reason of America, ( to use the 
expressive phrase of a great lord in office, ) it is not the judicial 
slaughter which is made in another hemisphere against their 
universal sense of justice that will ever reconcile them to the 
British government. 

I take it for granted, Gentlemen, that we sympathize in a 
proper horror of all punishment further than as it serves for an 
example. To whom, then, does the example of an execution in 
England for this American rebellion apply ? Kemember, you 
are told every day, that the present is a contest between the two 
countries, and that we in England are at war for our own dignity 
against our rebellious children. Is this true? If it be, it is 
surely among such rebellious children that examples for disobe- 
dience should be made, to be in any degree instructive : for who 
ever thought of teaching parents their duty by an example from 
the punishment of an undutiful son? As well might the exe- 
cution of a fugitive negro in the plantations be considered as a 
lesson to teach masters humanity to their slaves. Such execu- 
tions may indeed satiate our revenge ; they may harde.n our 
hearts, and puff us up with pride and arrogance. Ai»d j tnis 
is not instruction. 

If any thing can be drawn from such examples by a parity of 
the case, it is to show how deep their crime and how heavy their 
punishment will be, who shall at any time dare to resist a dis- 
tant power actually disposing of their property without their 
voice or consent to the disposition, and overturning their fran- 
chises without charge or hearing. God forbid that England 

7 Tyburn was a place in or near London where persons convicted of capital 
crimes were executed. 



14 BIJEKE. 

should ever read this lesson written in the blood of any of her 
offspring ! 

War is at present carried on between the King's natural and 
foreign troops, on one side, and the English in America, on the 
other, upon the usual footing of other wars ; and accordingly 
an exchange of prisoners has been regularly made from the be- 
ginning. If, notwithstanding this hitherto equal procedure, 
Upon some prospect of ending the war with success ( which how- 
ever may be delusive) administration prepares to act against 
those as traitors who remain in their hands at the end of the 
troubles, in my opinion we shall exhibit to the world as inde- 
cent a piece of injustice as ever civil fury has produced. If the 
prisoners who have been exchanged, have not by that exchange 
been virtually pardoned, the cartel ( whether avowed or under- 
stood ) is a cruel fraud ; for you have received the life of a man, 
and you ought to return a life for it, or there is no parity or 
fairness in the transaction. 

If, on the other hand, we admit that they who are actually ex- 
changed are pardoned, but contend that you may justly reserve 
for vengence those who remain unexchanged, then this un- 
pleasant and unhandsome consequence will follow, — that you 
judge of the delinquency of men merely by the time of their 
guilt, and not by the heinousness of it ; and you make fortune 
and accidents, and not the moral qualities of human action, 
the rule of your justice. 

These strange incongruities must ever perplex those who con- 
found the unhappiness of civil dissention with the crime of 
treason. Whenever a rebellion really and truly exists, which 
is as easily known in fact as it is difficult to define in words, 
government has not entered into such military conventions, but 
has ever declined all intermediate treaty which should put 
rebels in possession of the law of nations with regard to war. 
Commanders would receive no benefits at their hands, because 
they could make no return for them. Who has ever heard of 
capitulation, and parole of honour, and exchange of prisoners 
in the late rebellions in this kingdom ? The answer to all de- 
mands of that sort was, "We can engage for nothing ; you are 
at the King's pleasure." We ought to remember that, if our 
present enemies be in reality and truth rebels, the King's gen- 
erals have no right to release them upon any conditions what- 
soever ; and they are themselves answerable to the law, and as 
much in want of a pardon, for doing so, as the rebels whom they 
release. 

Lawyers, I know, cannot make the distinction for which I 
contend ; because they have their strict rule to go by. But leg- 
islators ought to do what lawyers cannot; for they have no 






LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 15 

other rules to bind them but the great principles of reason and 
equity, and the general sense of mankind. These they are 
bound to obey and follow, and rather to enlarge and enlighten 
• law by the liberality of legislative reason than to fetter and 
bind their higher capacity by the narrow constructions of sub- 
ordinate, artificial justice. If we had adverted to this, we never 
could consider the convulsions of a great empire, not dis- 
turbed by a little disseminated faction, but divided by whole 
communities and provinces, and entire legal representatives of 
a people, as fit matter of discussion under a commission of Oyer 
and Terminer. 8 It is as opposite to reason and prudence as it 
is to humanity and justice. 

This Act, proceeding on these principles, that is, preparing to 
end the present troubles by a trial of one sort of hostility under 
the name of piracy, and of another by the name of treason, and 
executing the Act of Henry the Eighth according to a new and 
unconstitutional interpretation, I have thought evil and dan- 
gerous, even though the instruments of effecting such purposes 
had been merely of a neutral quality. 

But it really appears to me that the means which this Act 
employs are at least as exceptionable as the end. Permit me 
to open myself a little upon this subject ; because it is of im- 
portance to me, when I am obliged to submit to the power 
without acquiescing in the reason of an Act of legislature, that 
I should justify my dissent by such arguments as may be sup- 
posed to have weight with a sober man. 

The main operative regulation of the Act is to suspend tha 
Common Law and the statute Habeas Corpus (the sole securi« 
ties either for liberty or justice) with regard to all those who 
have been out of the realm, or on the high seas, within a given 
time. The rest of the people, as I understand, are to continue 
as they stood before. 

I confess, Gentleman, that this appears to me as bad in the 
principle, and far worse in its consequence, than an universal 
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act ; and the limiting qualifi- 
cation, instead of taking out the sting, does in my humble opin- 
ion sharpen and envenom it to a greater degree. Liberty, if I 
understand it at all, is a general principle, and the clear right of 
all the subjects within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom 
seems to me a most invidious mode of slavery. But, unfortu- 
nately, it is the kind of slavery the most easily admitted in 
times of civil discord : for parties are but too apt to forget their 
own future safety in their desire of sacrificing their enemies. 

8 That is, authority to hear and determine legal caxises; oyer being an old 
Norman-French word meaning to hear. 



16 BURKE. 

People without much difficulty admit the entrance of that in- 
justice of which they are not to be the immediate victims. In 
times of high proceeding it is never the faction of the predom- 
inant power that is in danger ; for no tyranny chastises its own 
instruments. It is the obnoxious and the suspected who want 
the protection of law ; and there is nothing to bridle the partial 
violence of State factions but this, — "that, whenever an Act is 
made for a cessation of law and justice, the whole people 
should be universally subjected to the same suspension of their 
franchises." The alarm of such a proceeding would then be 
universal. It would operate as a sort of call of the nation. It 
would become every man's immediate and instant concern to be 
made very sensible of the absolute necessity of this total eclipse of 
liberty. They would more carefully advert to every renewal, 
and more powerfully resist it. These great determined meas- 
ures are not commonly so dangerous to freedom. They are 
marked with too strong lines to slide into use. No plea, nor 
pretence, of inconvenience or evil example (which must in their 
nature be daily and ordinary incidents) can be admitted as a 
reason for Isuch mighty operations. But the true danger is 
when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts. 
The Habeas Corpus Act supposes, contrary to the genius of 
most other laws, that the lawful magistrate may see particular 
men with a malignant eye, and it provides for that identical 
case. But when men, in particular descriptions, marked out by 
the magistrate himself, are delivered over by Parliament to 
this possible malignity, it is not the Habeas Corpus that is occa- 
sionally suspended, but its spirit that is mistaken, and its prin- 
ciple that is subverted. Indeed, nothing is security to any in- 
dividual but the common interest of all. 

This Act, therefore, has this distinguished evil in it, that it is 
the first partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus that has been 
made. The precedent, which is always of very great impor- 
tance, is now established. For the first time a distinction is 
made among the people within this realm. Before this Act, 
every man putting his foot on English ground, every stranger 
owing only a local and temporary allegiance, even negro slaves 
who had been sold in the colonies and under an Act of Parlia- 
ment, became as free as every other man who breathed the 
same air with them. Now a line is drawn, which may be ad- 
vanced further and further at pleasure, on the same argument 
of mere expedience on which it was first described. There is no 
equality among us ; we are not fellow-citizens, if the mariner 
who lands on the quay does not rest on as firm legal ground as 
the merchant who sits in his counting-house. Other laws may 
injure the community ; this dissolves it. As things now stand, 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 17 

every man in the West Indies, every one inhabitant of three 
unoffending provinces on the continent, every person coming 
from the East Indies, every gentleman who has travelled for 
his health or education, every mariner who has navigated the 
seas, is, for no other offence, under a temporary proscription. 
Let any of these facts (now become presumptions of guilt) be 
proved against him, and the bare suspicion of the Crown puts 
him out of the law. It is even by no means clear to me whether 
the negative proof does not lie upon the person apprehended on 
suspicion, to the subversion of all justice. 

I have not debated against this bill in its progress through 
the House, because it would have been vain to oppose, and 
impossible to correct it. It is some time since I have been 
clearly convinced that, in the present state of things, all oppo- 
sition to any measures proposed by Ministers, where the name 
of America appears, is vain and frivolous. You may be sure 
that I do not speak of my opposition, which in all circumstances 
must be so, but that of men of the greatest wisdom and author- 
ity in the nation. Every thing proposed against America is 
supposed of course to be in favour of Great Britain. Good and 
ill success are equally admitted as reasons for persevering in 
the present methods. Several very prudent and very well- 
intentioned persons were of opinion that, during the prevalence 
of such dispositions, all struggle rather inflamed than lessened 
the distemper of the public counsels. Finding such resistance 
to be considered as factious by most within doors and by very 
many without, I cannot conscientiously support what is against 
my opinion, nor prudently contend with what I know is irre- 
sistible. Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my 
activity for rational endeavours ; and I hope that my past con- 
duct has given sufficient evidence that, if I am a single day from 
my place, it is not owing to indolence or love of dissipation. 
The slightest hope of doing good is sufficient to recall me to 
what I quitted with regret. In declining for some time my 
usual strict attendance, I do not in the least condemn the spirit 
of those gentlemen who, with a just confidence in their abilities, 
( in which I claim a sort of share from my love and admiration 
of them,) were of opinion that their exertions in this desperate 
case might be of some service. They thought that by con- 
tracting the sphere of its application they might lessen the ma- 
lignity of an evil principle. Perhaps they were in the right. 
But when my opinion was so very clearly to the contrary, for 
the reasons I have just stated, I am sure. my attendance would 
have been ridiculous. 9 

9 In the Summer of 1776, the British had gained some Important advantages 



18 BURKE. 

I must add, in further explanation of my conduct, that, far 
from softening the features of such a principle, and thereby re- 
moving any part of the popular odium or natural terrors at- 
tending it, I should be sorry that any thing framed in contra- 
diction to the spirit of our Constitution did not instantly pro- 
duce, in fact, the grossest of the evils with which it was preg- 
nant in its nature. It is by lying dormant a long time, or being 
at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a 
people. On the next unconstitutional Act, all the fashionable 
world will be ready to say, "Your prophecies are ridiculous, 
your fears are vain ; you see how little of the mischiefs which 
you formerly foreboded are come to pass." Thus, by degrees, 
that artful softening of all arbitrary power, the alleged infre- 
quency or narrow extent of its operation, will be received as a 
sort of aphorism ; and Mr. Hume will not be singular in telling 
us that the felicity of mankind is no more disturbed by it than 
by earthquakes or thunder, or the other more unusual acci- 
dents of Nature. 

The Act of which I speak is among the fruits of the Ameri- 
can war, — a war in my humble opinion productive of many 
mischiefs, of a kind which distinguish it from all others. Not 
only our policy is deranged, and our empire distracted, but our 
laws and our legislative spirit appear to have been totally per- 
verted by it. We have made war on our colonies, not by arms 
only, but by laws. As hostility and law are not very concordant 
ideas, every step we have taken in this business has been made 
by trampling on some maxim of justice or some capital princi- 
ple of wise government. What precedents were established, 
and what principles overturned, (I will not say of English privi- 
lege, but of general justice,) in the Boston Port, the Massachu- 
setts Charter, the Military Bill, 1 and all that long array of 

in the war, especially the victory on Long Island, and the possession of New 
York city. This turn of success rendered the British government and people 
more confident than ever of reducing the insurgent colonies to submission: 
moderation was cast off, the voice of conciliation was drowned in songs of tri- 
umph, and the tide of infatuation ran to the highest pitch. This naturally 
brought the opposition in Parliament to a point correspondingly low; insomuch 
that in the Fall and Winter following most of the Rockingham Whigs, Burke 
among them, carried out the plan of partial secession which they had for some 
time entertained. They attended during the hours of general business in the 
morning; but as soon as the special questions came up, they made their bows to 
the Speaker, and withdrew. Notwithstanding the reasons given in the text, the 
act was one of doubtful expediency. 

1 Of these three bills, the first, hastily passed in 1774, was for closing the har- 
hour, and thereby squelching the commerce of Boston: it prohibited "the lad- 
ing or unlading of all goods or merchandise at any place within the precincts 
of Boston," until the colony should, be brought to eutire submission. The sec 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 19 

hostile Acts of Parliament by which the war with America has 
been begun and supported ! Had the principles of any of these 
Acts been first exerted on English 'ground, they would proba- 
bly have expired as soon as they touched it. But, by being 
removed from our persons, they have rooted in our laws, and 
the latest posterity will taste the fruits of them. 

Nor is it the worst effect of this unnatural contention, that 
our laws are corrupted. Whilst manners remain entire, they will 
correct the vices of law, and soften it at length to their own 
temper. But we have to lament that in most of the late pro- 
ceedings we see very few traces of that generosity, humanity, 
and dignity of mind, which formerly characterized this nation. 
"War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long 
suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars 
strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They viti- 
ate their politics ; they corrupt their morals ; they pervert even 
the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching 
us to consider our fellow-citizens in an hostile light, the whole 
body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The 
very names of affection and kindred, which were the bond of 
charity whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and 
rage when the communion of our country is dissolved. We may 
flatter ourselves that we shall not fall into this misfortune. 
But we have no charter of exemption, that I know of, from the 
ordinary frailties of our nature. 

What but that blindness of heart which arises from the 
frenzy of civil contention could have made any persons con- 
ceive the present situation of the British affairs as an object of 
triumph to themselves or of congratulation to their sovereign ? ■ 
Nothing, surely, could be more lamentable to those who re- 
member the flourishing days of this kingdom, than to see the 
insane joy of several unhappy people, amidst the sad spectacle 
which our affairs and conduct exhibit to the scorn of Europe. 
We behold (and it seems some people rejoice in beholding) 
our native land, which used to sit the envied arbiter of all her 
neighbours, reduced to a servile dependence on their mercy, — 
acquiescing in assurances of friendship which she does not 
trust, — complaining of hostilities which she dares not resent, — 

ond, passed the same session, revoked and annulled the royal charter of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, in pursuance of Avhich the public affairs of the colony had been 
conducted more than eighty years; the Act took the appointment of all judicial 
and municipal officers away from the colonists, and vested it in the Crown. The 
third, also passed the same session, was for quartering British troops upon the 
inhabitants of Boston ; thus compelling them to support the instruments of their 
own oppression. All conceived in the spirit of a most insane policy; utterly 
impotent, too, save to exasperate and inflame. 






. i 



20 BUKKE. 

deficient to her allies, lofty to her subjects, and submissive to 
her enemies ; 2 — whilst the liberal government of this free na- 
tion is supported by the hireling sword of German boors and 
vassals, and three millions of the subjects of Great Britain are 
seeking for protection to English privileges in the arms of 
Prance ! 

These circumstances appear to me more like shocking prod- 
igies than natural changes in human affairs. Men of firmer 
minds may see them without staggering or astonishment. 
Some may think them matters of congratulation and compli- 
mentary addresses ; but I trust your candour will be so indul- 
gent to my weakness as not to have the worse opinion of me for 
my declining to participate in this joy, and my rejecting all 
share whatsoever in such a triumph. I am too old, too stiff in 
my inveterate partialities, to be ready at all the fashionable ev- 
olutions of opinion. I scarcely know how to adapt my mind to 
the feelings with which the Court Gazettes mean to impress the 
people. It is not instantly that I can be brought to rejoice, 
when I hear of the slaughter and captivity of long lists of those 
names which have been familiar to my ears from my infancy, 
and to rejoice that they have fallen under the sword of 
strangers, whose barbarous appellations I scarcely know how to 
pronounce. The glory acquired at the White Plains by Colonel 
Eahl has no charms for me, and I fairly acknowledge that I 
have not yet learned to delight in finding Fort Kniphausen in 
the heart of the British dominions. 3 

It might be some consolation for the loss of our old regards, 
if our reason were enlightened in proportion as our honest prej- 
udices are removed. Wanting feelings for the honour of our 
country, we might then in cold blood be brought to think a 
little of our interests as individual citizens and our private con- 
science as moral agents. 

Indeed, our affairs are in a bad condition. I do assure those 
gentlemen who have prayed for war, and obtained the blessing 
they have sought, that they are at this instant in very great 
straits. The abused wealth of this country continues a little 
longer to feed its distemper. As yet they, and their German 

2 The special allusion here is to the negotiations, then in progress, which 
resulted in an alliance between France and the colonies. The British govern- 
ment were aware of those proceedings, but had to ignore them, through fear of 
provoking France to an early championship of the American cause. 

3 General Kniphauscn was a commander of the German troops serving un- 
der General Howe. After the capture of Fort Washington, which stood on the 
Hudson not far above New York city, Colonel Rhal, or Rail, who Avas under 
Kniphauscn, and was the hero of that exploit, changed the name to Fort Ivnip. 
hausen. 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 21 

allies of twenty hireling States, have contended only with the 
unprepared strength of our own infant colonies. But America 
is not subdued. !N"ot one unattacked village which was origin- 
ally adverse throughout that vast continent has yet submitted 
from love or terror. You have the ground you encamp on, and 
you have no more. The cantonments of your troops and your 
dominions are exactly of the same extent. You spread devas- 
tation, but you do not enlarge the sphere of authority. 

The events of this war are of so much greater magnitude than 
those who either wished or feared it ever looked for, that this 
alone ought to fill every considerate mind with anxiety and dif- 
fidence. Wise men often tremble at the very things which fill 
the thoughtless with security. For many reasons I do not 
choose to expose to public view all the particulars of the state 
in which you stood with regard to foreign powers during the 
whole course of the last year. Whether you are yet wholly out 
of danger from them is more than I know, or than your rulers 
can divine. But even if I were certain of my safety, I could not 
easily forgive those who had brought me into the most dreadful 
perils, because by accidents, unforeseen by them or me, I have 
escaped. 

Believe me, Gentlemen, the way still before you is intricate, 
dark, and full of perplexed and treacherous mazes. Those who 
think they have the clew may lead us out of this labyrinth. 
We may trust them as amply as we think proper ; but as they 
have most certainly a call for all the reason which their stock 
can furnish, why should we think it proper to disturb its opera- 
tion by inflaming their passions? I may be unable to lend a 
helping hand to those who direct the State ; but I should be 
ashamed to make myself one of a noisy multitude to halloo 
and hearten them into doubtful and dangerous courses. A 
conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. 
He would feel some apprehension at being called to a tremen- 
dous account for engaging in so deep a play without any sort 
of knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous 
ignorance, that it is directed by insolent passion. The poorest 
being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from in- 
justice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of 
God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under 
Heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts 
of things ) that is more truly odious and disgusting than an im- 
potent, helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, 
without a consciousness of any other qualification for power but 
his servility to it, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for 
battles which he is not to fight, contending for a violent do- 
minion which he can never exercise, and satisfied to be himself 



22 BURKE. 

mean and miserable, in order to render others contemptible 
and wretched. 

If yon and I find our talents not of the great and ruling kind, 
our conduct, at least, is conformable to our faculties. No 
man's life pays the forfeit of our rashness. No desolate widow 
weeps tears of blood over our ignorance. Scrupulous and sober 
in a well-grounded distrust of ourselves, we would keep in the 
port of peace and security ; and perhaps in recommending to 
others something of the same diffidence, we should show our- 
selves more charitable to their welfare than injurious to their 
abilities. 

There are many circumstances in the zeal shown for civil war 
which seem to discover but little of real magnanimity. The 
addressers offer their own persons, and they are satisfied with 
hiring Germans. They promise their private fortunes, and they 
mortgage their country. They have all the merit of volunteers, 
without risk of person or charge of contribution ; and when the 
unfeeling arm of a foreign soldiery pours out their kindred blood 
like water, they exult and triumph as if they themselves had 
performed some notable exploit. I am really ashamed *of the 
fashionable language which has been held for some time past, 
which, to say the best of it, is full of levity. You know that I 
allude to the general cry against the cowardice of the Amer- 
icans, as if we despised them for not making the King's soldiery 
purchase the advantage they have obtained at a dearer rate. 
It is not, Gentlemen, it is not to respect the dispensations of 
Providence, nor to provide any decent retreat in the mutability 
of human affairs. It leaves no medium between insolent victory 
and infamous defeat. It tends to alienate our minds further 
and further from our natural regards, and to make an eternal 
rent and schism in the British nation. Those who do not wish 
for such a separation would not dissolve that cement of reciprocal 
esteem and regard which can alone bind together the parts of 
this great fabric. It ought to be our wish, as it is our duty, not 
only to forbear this style of outrage ourselves, but to make 
every one as sensible as we can of the impropriety and un- 
worthiness of the tempers which give rise to it, and which de- 
signing men are labouring with such malignant industry to 
diffuse amongst us. It is our business to counteract them, if 
possible, — if possible, to awake our natural regards, and to 
revive the old partiality to the English name. Without some- 
thing of this kind I do not see how it is ever practicable really 
to reconcile with those whose affection, after all, must be the 
surest hold of our government, and which is a thousand times 
more worth to us than the mercenary zeal of all the circles of 
Germany. 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 23 

I can well conceive a country completely overrun, and mis- 
erably wasted, without approaching in the least to settlement. 
In my apprehension, as long as English government is attempt- 
ed to be supported over Englishmen by the sword alone, things 
Will thus continue. I anticipate in my mind the moment of the 
final triumph of foreign military force. When that hour arrives, 
(for it may arrive,) then it is that all this mass of weakness and 
violence will appear in its full light. If we should be expelled 
from America, the delusion of the partisans of military govern- 
ment might still continue. They might still feed their imagina- 
tions with the possible good consequences which might have 
attended success. Nobody could prove the contrary by facts. 
But in case the sword should do all that the sword can do, the 
success of their arms and the defeat of their policy will be one 
and the same thing. You will never see any revenue from 
America. Some increase of the means of corruption, without 
ease of the public burdens, is the very best that can happen. 
Is it for this that we are at Avar, — and in such a war? 

As to the difficulties of laying once more the foundations of 
that government which, for the sake of conquering what was 
our own, has been voluntarily and wantonly pulled down by a 
Court faction here, I tremble to look at them. Has any of these 
gentlemen who are so eager to govern all mankind shown him- 
self possessed of the first qualification towards government, 
some knowledge of the object, and of the difficulties which 
occur in the task they have undertaken ? 

I assure you that, on the most prosperous issue of your arms, 
you will not be where you stood when you called in war to 
supply the defects of your political establishment. ~Nor would 
any disorder or disobedience to government which could arise 
from the most abject concession on our part ever equal those 
which will be felt after the most triumphant violence. You 
have got all the intermediate evils of war into the bargain. 

I think I know America, — if I do not, my ignorance is incura- 
ble, for I have spared no pains to understand it, — and I do 
most solemnly assure those of my constituents who put any sort 
of confidence in my industry and integrity, that every thing 
that has been done there has arisen from a total misconception 
of the object; that our means of originally holding America, 
that our means of reconciling with it after quarrel, of recover- 
ing it after separation, of keeping it after victory, did depend, 
and must depend, in their several stages and periods, upon a 
total renunciation of that unconditional submission which has 
taken such possession of the minds of violent men. The whole 
of those maxims upon which we have made and continued this 
war must be abandoned. Nothing, indeed, (for I would not de- 



24 BUKKE. 

ceive you,) can place us in our former situation. That hope 
must be laid aside. But there is a difference between bad and 
the worst of all. Terms relative to the cause of the war ought 
to be offered by the authority of Parliament. An arrangement 
at home promising some security for them ought to be made. 
By doing this, without the least impairing of our strength, we 
add to the credit of our moderation, which, in itself, is always 
strength more or less. 

I know many have been taught to think that moderation in a 
case like this is a sort of treason ; and that all arguments for 
it are sufficiently answered by railing at rebels and rebellion, 
and by charging all the present or future miseries which we 
may suffer on the resistance of our brethren. But I would wish 
them, in this grave matter, and if peace is not wholly removed 
from their hearts, to consider seriously, first, that to criminate 
and recriminate never yet was the road to reconciliation, in any 
difference amongst men. In the next place, it would be right 
to reflect that the American English (whom they may abuse, if 
they think it honourable to revile the absent) can, as things now 
stand, neither be provoked at our railing or bettered by our in- 
struction. All communication is cut off between us. But this 
we know with certainty, that, though we cannot reclaim them, 
we may reform ourselves. If measures of peace are necessary, 
they must begin somewhere ; and a conciliatory temper must 
precede and prepare every plan of reconciliation. ~Nor do I 
conceive that we suffer any thing by thus regulating our own 
minds. We are not disarmed by being disencumbered of our 
passions. Declaiming on rebellion never added a bayonet or a 
charge of powder to your military force ; but I am afraid that it 
has been the means of taking up many muskets against you. 

This outrageous language, which has been encouraged and 
kept alive by every art, has already done incredible mischief. 
For a long time, even amidst the desolations of war, and the in- 
sults of hostile laws daily accumulated on one another, the 
American leaders seem to have had the greatest difficulty in 
bringing up their people to a declaration of total independence. 
But the Court Gazette accomplished what the abettors of inde- 
pendence had attempted in vain. When that disingenuous 
compilation and strange medley of railing and flattery was ad- 
duced as a proof of the united sentiments of the people of Great 
Britain, there was a great change throughout all America. 
The tide of popular affection, which had still set towards the 
parent country, began immediately to turn, and to flow with 
great rapidity in a contrary course. Far from concealing these 
wild declarations of enmity, the author of the celebrated pam- 
phlet which prepared the minds of the people for independence 



LETTEE TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 25 

insists largely on the multidude and the spirit of these 
addresses ; and he draws an argument from them, which, if the 
fact were as he supposes, must be irresistible. For I never 
knew a writer on the theory of government so partial to author- 
ity as not to allow that the hostile mind of the rulers to their 
people did fully justify a change of government ; nor can any 
reason whatever be given why one people should voluntarily 
yield any degree of preeminence to another but on a supposition 
of great affection and benevolence towards them. Unfortu- 
nately, your rulers, trusting to other things, took no notice of 
this great principle of connection. From the beginning of this 
affair, they have done all they could to alienate your minds from 
your own kindred ; and if they could excite hatred enough in 
one of the parties towards the other, they seemed to be of opin- 
ion that they had gone half the way towards reconciling the 
quarrel. 

I know it is said, that your kindness is only alienated on ac- 
count of their resistance, and therefore, if the colonies surren- 
der at discretion, all sort of regard, and even much indulgence, 
is meant towards them in future. But can those who are 
partisans for continuing a war to enforce such a surrender be 
responsible (after all that has passed) for such a future use of 
a power that is bound by no compacts and restrained by no 
terror ? Will they tell us what they call indulgences ? Do they 
not at this instant call the present war and all its horrors a 
lenient and merciful proceeding ? 

No conqueror that I ever heard of has professed to make a 
cruel, harsh, and insolent use of his conquest. No ! The man 
of the most declared pride scarcely dares to trust his own heart 
with this dreadful secret of ambition. But it will appear in its 
time ; and no man who professes to reduce another to the inso- 
lent mercy of a foreign arm ever had any sort of good-will to- 
wards him. The profession of kindness, with that sword in his 
hand, and that demand of surrender, is one of the most provok- 
ing acts of his hostility. I shall be told that all this is lenient 
as against rebellious adversaries. But are the leaders of their 
faction more lenient to those who submit ! Lord Howe and 
General Howe have powers, under an Act of Parliament, to re- 
store to the King's peace and to free trade any men or district 
which shall submit. Is this done ? "We have been over and over 
informed by the authorized gazette, that the city of New York 
and the countries of Staten and Long Island have submitted 
voluntarily and cheerfully, and that many are very full of zeal 
to the cause of administration. "Were they instantly restored to 
trade ? Are they yet restored to it ? Is not the benignity of two 
commissioners, naturally most humane and generous men, some 



26 



BURKE. 



way fettered by instructions, equally against their dispositions 
and the spirit of Parliamentary faith, when Mr. Tryon, vaunt- 
ing of the fidelity of the city in which he is governor, is obliged 
to apply to ministry for leave to protect the King's loyal sub- 
jects, and to grant to them, not the disputed rights and privi- 
leges of freedom, but the common rights of men, by the name 
of graces f Why do not the commissioners restore them on the 
spot? Were they not named as commissioners for that express 
purpose? But we see well enough to what the whole leads. 
The trade of America is to be dealt out in private indulgences 
and graces; that is, in jobs to recompense the incendiaries of 
war. They will be informed of the proper time in which to 
send out their merchandise. From a national, the American 
trade is to be turned into a personal monopoly, and one set of 
merchants are to be rewarded for the pretended zeal of which 
another set are the dupes ; and thus, between craft and credu- 
lity, the voice of reason is stifled, and all the misconduct, all 
the calamities of the war are covered and continued. 

If I had not lived long enough to be little surprised at any 
thing, I should have been in some degree astonished at the con- 
tinued rage of several gentlemen, who, not satisfied with car- 
rying fire and sword into America* are animated nearly with the 
same fury against those neighbours of theirs whose only crime 
it is, that they have charitably and humanely wished them to 
entertain more reasonable sentiments, and not always to sac- 
rifice their interest to their passion. All this rage against unre- 
sisting dissent convinces me that, at bottom, they are far from 
satisfied they are in the right. For what is it they would have ? 
A war? They certainly have at this moment the blessing of 
something that is very like one ; and if the war they enjoy at 
present be not sufficiently hot and extensive, they may shortly 
have it as warm and as spreading as their hearts can desire. Is 
it the force of the kingdom they call for? They have it al- 
ready ; and if they choose to fight their battles in their own per- 
son, nobody prevents their setting sail to America in the next 
transports. Do they think that the service is stinted for want 
of liberal supplies? Indeed they complain without reason. 
The table of the House of Commons will glut them, let their 
appetite for expense be never so keen. And I assure them 
further, that those who think with them in the House of Com- 
mons are full as easy in the control as they are liberal in the 
vote of these expenses. If this be not supply or confidence 
sufficient, let them open their own private purse-strings, and 
give, from what is left to them, as largely and with as little care 
as they think proper. 

Tolerated in their passions, let them learn not to persecute 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 27 

the moderation of their fellow-citizens. If all the world joined 
them in a full cry against rebellion, and were as hotly inflamed 
against the whole theory and enjoyment of freedom as those 
who are the most factious for servitude, it could not, in my 
opinion, answer any one end whatsoever in this contest. The 
leaders of this Avar could not hire (to gratify their friends) one 
German more than they do, or inspire him with less feeling for 
the persons or less value for the privileges of their revolted 
brethren. If we all adopted their sentiments to a man, their 
allies, the savage Indians, could not be more ferocious than 
they are : they could not murder one more helpless woman or 
child, or with more exquisite refinements of cruelty torment 
to death one more of their English flesh and blood, than they 
do already. The public money is given to purchase this alli- 
ance ; — and they have their bargain. 

They are continually boasting of unanimity, or calling for it. 
But before this unanimity can be matter either of wish or con- 
gratulation, we ought to be pretty sure that we are engaged in a 
rational pursuit. Frenzy does not become a slighter distemper 
on account of the number of those who may be infected with it. 
Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less be- 
cause they are universal. I declare that I cannot discern the 
least advantage which could accrue to us, if we were able to 
persuade our colonies that they had not a single friend in Great 
Britain. On the contrary, if the affections and opinions of 
mankind be not exploded as principles of connection, I conceive 
it would be happy for us, if they were taught to believe that 
there was even a formed American party in England, to whom 
they could always look for support. Happy would it be for us, 
if, in all tempers, they might turn their eyes to the parent State, 
so that their very turbulence and sedition should find vent in 
no other place than this ! I belive there is not a man ( except 
those who prefer the interest of some paltry faction to the very 
being of their country ) who would not wish that the Americans 
should from time to time carry many points, and even some of 
them not quite reasonable, by the aid of any denomination of 
men here, rather than they should be driven to seek for protec- 
tion against the fury of foreign mercenaries and the waste of 
savages in the arms of France. 

When any community is subordinately connected with an- 
other, the great danger of the connection is the extreme pride 
and self-complacency of the superior, which in all matters of 
controversy will probably decide in its own favour. It is a 
powerful corrective to such a very rational cause of fear, if the 
inferior body can be made to believe that the party inclination 
or political views of several in the principal State will induce 



28 BURKE. 

them in some degree to counteract this blind and tyrannical 
partiality. There is no danger that any one acquiring consid- 
eration or power in the presiding State should carry this leaning 
to the inferior too far. The fault "of human nature is not of 
that sort. Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too 
strict limitations on itself. But one great advantage to the sup- 
port of authority attends such an amicable and protecting con- 
nection, — that those who have conferred favours obtain influ- 
ence, and from the foresight of future events can persuade men 
who have received obligations sometimes to return them. Thus, 
by the mediation of those healing principles, (call them good 
or evil,) troublesome discussions are brought to some sort of 
adjustment, and every hot controversy is not a civil war. 

But, if the colonies ( to bring the general matter home to us ) 
could see that in Great Britain the mass of the people is melted 
into its government, and that every dispute with the Ministry 
must of neccessity be always a quarrel with the nation, they 
can stand no longer in the equal and friendly relation of fellow- 
citizens to the subjects of this kingdom. Humble as this rela- 
tion may appear to some, when it is once broken, a strong tie is 
dissolved. Other sort of connections will be sought. For there 
are very few in the world who will not prefer an useful ally to 
an insolent master. 

Such discord has been the effect of the unanimity into which 
so many have of late been seduced or bullied, or into the ap- 
pearance of which they have sunk through mere despair. They 
have been told that their dissent from violent measures is an 
encouragement to rebellion. Men of great presumption and 
little knowledge will hold a language which is contradicted by 
the whole course of history. General rebellions and revolts of 
an whole people never were encouraged, now or at any time. 
They are always provoked. But if this unheard-of doctrine of the 
encouragement of rebellion were true, if it were true that an 
assurance of the friendship of numbers in this country towards 
the colonies could become an encouragement to them to break 
off all connection with it, what is the inference ? Does anybody 
seriously maintain that, charged with my share of the public 
councils, I am obliged not to resist projects which I think mis- 
chievous, lest men who suffer should be encouraged to resist? 
The very tendency of such projects to produce rebellion is one 
of the chief reasons against them. Shall that reason not be 
given ? Is it, then, a rule, that no man in this nation shall open 
his mouth in favour of the colonies, shall defend their rights, 
or complain of their sufferings, — or, when war finally breaks 
out, no man shall express his desires of peace ? Has this been 
the law of our past, or is it to be the terms of our future con- 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 29 

nectioii? Even looking no further than ourselves, can it be 
true loyalty to any government, or true patriotism towards any 
country, to degrade their solemn councils into servile drawing- 
rooms, to natter their pride and passions rather than to en- 
lighten their reason, and to prevent them from being cautioned 
against violence, lest others should be encouraged to resistance ? 
By such acquiescence great kings and mighty nations have been 
undone ; and if any are at this day in a perilous situation from 
rejecting truth and listening to flattery, it would rather become 
them to reform the errors under which they suffer than to 
reproach those who forewarned them of their danger. 

But the rebels looked for assistance from this country? — 
They did so, in the beginning of this controversy, most cer- 
tainly ; and they sought it by earnest supplications to govern- 
ment, which dignity rejected, and by a suspension of commerce, 
which the wealth of this nation enabled you to despise. When 
they found that neither prayers nor menaces had any sort of 
weight, but that a firm resolution was taken to reduce them to 
unconditional obedience by a military force, they came to the 
last extremity. Despairing of us, they trusted in themselves. 
Not strong enough themselves, they sought succour in France. 
In proportion as all encouragement here lessened, their distance 
from this country increased. The encouragement is over ; the 
alienation is complete. 

In order to jjroduce this favourite unanimity in delusion, and 
to prevent all possibility of a return to our ancient happy con- 
cord, arguments for our continuance in this course are drawn 
from the wretched situation itself into which we have been be- 
trayed. It is said that, being at war with the colonies, whatever 
our sentiments might have been before, all ties between us are 
now dissolved, and all the policy we have left is to strengthen 
the hands of government to reduce them. On the principle of 
this argument, the more mischiefs we suffer from any adminis- 
tration, the more our trust in it is to be confirmed. Let them 
but once get us into a war, and then their power is safe, and an 
Act of oblivion passed for all their misconduct. 

But is it really true that government is always to be strength- 
ened with the instruments of war, but never furnished with the 
means of peace? In former times, Ministers, I allow, have 
been sometimes driven by the popular voice to assert by arms 
the national honour against foreign powers. But the wisdom 
of the nation has been far more clear, when those Ministers 
have been compelled to consult its interests by treaty. We all 
know that the sense of the nation obliged the Court of Charles 
the Second to abandon the Butch war; — a war, next to the pres- 
ent, the most impolitic which we ever carried on. The good 




30 BURKE. 

people of England considered Holland as a sort of dependency 
on this kingdom ; they dreaded to drive it to the protection or 
subject it to the power of France by their own inconsiderate 
hostility. They paid but little respect to the Court jargon of 
that day ; nor were they inflamed by the pretended rivalship of 
the Dutch in trade,— by the massacre at Amboyna, acted on the 
stage to provoke the public vengeance, 4 — nor by declamations 
against the ingratitude of the United Provinces for the benefits 
England had conferred upon them in their infant state. They 
were not moved from their evident interest by all these arts ; 
nor was it enough to tell them they were at war, that they must 
go through with it, and that the cause of the dispute was lost in 
the consequences. The people of England were then, as they 
are now, called upon to make government strong. They thought 
it a great deal better to make it wise and honest. 

When I was amongst my constituents at the last summer as- 
sizes, I remember that men of all descriptions did then express 
a very strong desire for peace, and no slight hopes of attaining 
it from the commission sent out by my Lord Howe. And it is not 
*a little remarkable that, in proportion as every person showed 
a zeal for the Court measures, he was then earnest in circulating 
an opinion of the extent of the supposed powers of that com- 
mission. When I told them that Lord Howe had no powers to 
treat, or to promise satisfaction on any point whatsoever of the 
controversy, I was hardly credited,— so strong and general was 
the desire of terminating this war by the method of accommoda- 
tion. As far as I could discover, this was the temper then prev- 
alent through the kingdom. The King's forces, it must be ob- 
served, had at that time been obliged to evacuate Boston. The 
superiority of the former campaign rested wholly with the colo- 
nists. If such powers of treaty were to be wished whilst suc- 
cess was very doubtful, how came they to be less so, since his 
Majesty's arms have been crowned with many considerable ad- 
vantages? Have these successes induced us to alter our mind, 
as thinking the season of victory not the time for treating with 
honour or advantage? Whatever changes have happened in 
the national character, it can scarcely be our wish that terms of 

4 Amboyna is one of the East India Islands. A trading company of Eng- 
lishmen, with their families, were settled there, and in possession of the Island; 
and in 1G23 or 1624. a Dutch company, wishing to engross the spice trade, claimed 
possession, seized the English, and put them all to death, with circumstances 
of great atrocity. In 1072, Charles the Second, who was then a pensioner of 
Louis the Fourteenth, formed a League with him, and forced the English into 
making common cause with him against the Dutch, their old friends and allies. 
As the English people were altogether opposed to this suicidal war, some of the 
King's creatures got up a theatrical representation of the massacre at Amboy- 
na, in order to inflame the public mind against the Dutch. 






LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 31 

accommodation never should be proposed to our enemy, except 
when they must be attributed solely to our fears. It has hap- 
pened, let me say unfortunately, that we read of his Majesty's 
commission for making peace, and his troops evacuating his last 
town in the Thirteen Colonies, at the same hour and in the same 
gazette. It was still more unfortunate that no commission went 
to America to settle the troubles there, until several months 
after an Act had been passed to put the colonies out of the pro- 
tection of this government, and to divide their trading property, 
without a possibility of restitution, as spoil among the seamen 
of the navy. The most abject submission on the part of the 
colonies could not redeem them. There was no man on that 
whole continent, or within three thousand miles of it, qualified 
by law to follow allegiance with protection or submission with 
pardon. A proceeding of this kind has no example in history. 
Independency, and independency with an enmity, ( which, put- 
ting ourselves out of the question, would be called natural and 
much provoked,) was the inevitable consequence. How this 
came to pass the nation may be one day in an humour to inquire. 

All the attempts made this session to give fuller powers of 
peace to the commanders in America were stifled by the fatal 
confidence of victory and the wild hopes of unconditional sub- 
mission. There was a moment favourable to the King's arms, 
when, if any powers of concession had existed on the other 
side of the Atlantic, even after all our errors, peace in all proba- 
bility might have been restored. But calamity is unhappily the 
usual season of reflection ; and the pride of men will not often 
suffer reason to have any scope, until it can be no longer of 
service. 

I have always wished that, as the dispute had its apparent 
origin from things done in Parliament, and as the Acts passed 
there had provoked the war, the foundations of peace should be 
laid in Parliament also. I have been astonished to find that 
those whose zeal for the dignity of our body was so hot as to 
light up the flames of civil war should even publicly declare 
^that these delicate points ought to be wholly left to the Crown. 
Poorly as I may be thought affected to the authority of Parlia- 
ment, I shall never admit that our constitional rights can ever 
become a matter of ministerial negotiation. 

I am charged with being an American. If warm affection 
towards those over whom I. claim any share of authority be a 
crime, I am guilty of this charge. But I do assure you ( and 
they who know me publicly and privately will bear witness to 
me ) that, if ever one man lived more zealous than another for 
the supremacy of Parliament and the rights of this imperial 
Crown, it was myself. Many others indeed might be more 



32 BURKE. 

knowing in the extent of the foundation of these rights. I do 
not pretend to be an antiquary, a lawyer, or qualified for the 
chair of professor in metaphysics. I never ventured to put your 
solid interests upon speculative grounds. My having constantly 
declined to do so has been attributed to my incapacity for such 
disquisitions ; and I am inclined to believe it is partly the cause. 
I never shall be ashamed to confess that, where I am ignorant, 
I am diffident. I am indeed not very solicitous to clear myself 
of this imputed incapacity ; because men even less conversant 
than I am in this kind of subtilties, and placed in stations to 
which I ought not to aspire, have, by the mere force of civil 
discretion, often conducted the affairs of great nations with 
distinguished felicity and glory. 

When I first came into a public trust, I found your Parlia- 
ment in possession of an unlimited legislative power over the 
colonies. I could not open the statute-book without seeing the 
actual exercise of it, more or less, in all cases whatsoever. 
This possession passed with me for a title. It does so in all 
human affairs. No man examines into the defects of his title 
to his paternal estate or to his established government. In- 
deed, common sense taught me that a legislative authority not 
actually limited by the express terms of its foundation, or by 
its own subsequent Acts, cannot have its powers parcelled out 
by argumentative distinctions, so as to enable us to say that 
here they can and there they cannot bind. jSTobody was so 
obliging as to produce to me any record of such distinctions, by 
compact or otherwise, either at the successive formation of the 
several colonies or during the existence of any of them. If any 
gentlemen were able to see how one power could be given up 
(merely on abstract reasoning) without giving up the rest, I can 
only say that they saw further than I could. 3sTor did I ever 
presume to condemn any one for being clear-sighted, when I 
was blind. I praise their penetration and learning, and hope 
that their practice has been correspondent to their theory. 

I had indeed very earnest wishes to keep the whole body of 
this authority perfect and entire as I found it, — and to keep it 
so, not for our advantage solely, but principally for the sake of 
those on whose account all just authority exists : I mean, the 
people to be governed. For I thought I saw that many cases 
might well happen in which the exercise of every power com- 
prehended in the broadest idea of legislature might become, in 
its time and circumstances, not a little expedient for the peace 
and union of the colonies amongst themselves, as well as for 
their perfect harmony with Great Britain. 5 Thinking so, ( per- 

5 The wisdom of Burke's doctrine of " an unlimited legislative power over 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 33 

haps erroneously, but being honestly of that opinion,) I was at 
the same time very sure that the authority of which I was so 
jealous could not, under the actual circumstances of our plan- 
tations, be at all preserved in any of its members, but by the 
greatest reserve in its application, particularly in those delicate 
points in which the feelings of mankind are the most irritable. 
They who thought otherwise have found a few more difficulties 
in their work than ( I hope ) they were thoroughly aware of, 
when they undertook the present business. I must beg leave 
to observe, that it is not only the invidious branch of taxation 
that will be resisted, but that no other given part of legislative 
rights can be exercised, without regard to the general opinion 
of those who are to be governed. That general opinion is the 
vehicle and organ of legislative omnipotence. Without this, it 
may be a theory to entertain the mind, but it is nothing in the 
direction of affairs. The completeness of the legislative au- 
thority of Parliament over this kingdom is not questioned ; and 
yet many things indubitably included in the abstract idea of 
that power, and which carry no absolute injustice in them- 
selves, yet being contrary to the opinions and feelings of the 
people, can as little be exercised as if Parliament in that case 
had been possessed of no right at all. I see no abstract reason 
which can be given, why the same power which made and re- 
pealed the High Commission Court and Star-Chamber might 
not revive them again ; (i and these courts, warned by their for- 
mer fate, might possibly exercise their powers with some degree 
of justice. .But the madness would be as unquestionable as the 
competence of that Parliament which should attempt such 
things. If any thing can be supposed out of the power of hu- 
man legislature, it is religion ; I admit, however, that the estab- 
lished religion of this country has been three or four times 
altered by Act of Parliament, and therefore that a statute binds 

the colonies " is still questioned by many. Pitt the elder denied the existence 
of any such high imperial authority, and the colonial leaders all agreed with 
him. But something substantially equivalent to it was found necessary by the 
colonies after their independence Avas established, and is in fact claimed and 
exercised by our National Government to this day. 

6 The Court of High Commission was established by Queen Elizabeth, in 
1584, as the organ of her ecclesiastical supremacy. It consisted of forty-four 
members, twelve of whom were clergymen; and three made a quorum. The 
Court was armed with full inquisitorial powers over all sorts of persons, and in 
all matters of action and opinion, and was above all legal check and control. 
And the proceedings of this terrible engine were so well in keeping with its 
nature, that it became utterly intolerable, and was abolished by the Long Par- 
liament in 1641. The Star-Chamber Court, a much older establishment, having 
jurisdiction in civil cases, and clothed with like discretionary powers, was a no 
less hateful engine of tyranny, and fell at the same time. 



34 BUEKE. 



even in that case. But we may very safely affirm that, not- 
withstanding this apparent omnipotence, it would be now found 
as impossible for King and Parliament to alter the established 
religion of this country as it was to King James alone, when he 
attempted to make such an alteration without a Parliament. 
In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination, —to 
give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanc- 
tion, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of 
legislature. 

It is so with regard to the exercise of all the powers which our 
Constitution knows in any of its parts, and indeed to the sub- 
stantial existence of any of the parts themselves. The King's 
negative to bills is one of the most undisputed of the royal pre- 
rogatives ; and it extends to all cases whatsoever. I am far 
from certain that, if several laws, which I know, had fallen 
under the stroke of that sceptre, the public would have had a 
very heavy loss. But it is not the propriety of the exercise 
which is in question. The exercise itself is wisely forborne. 
Its repose may be the preservation of its existence ; and its ex- 
istence may be the means of saving the Constitution itself, on 
an occasion worthy of bringing it forth. 

As the disputants whose accurate and logical reasonings have 
brought us into our present condition think it absurd that 
powers or members of any constitution should exist, rarely, if 
ever, to be exercised, I hope I shall be excused in mentioning 
another instance that is material. We know that the Convoca- 
tion of the Clergy had formerly been called, and sat with nearly 
as much regularity to business as Parliament itself. 7 It is now 
called for form only. It sits for the purpose of making some 
polite ecclesiastical compliments to the King, and, when that 
grace is said, retires and is heard of no more. It is, however, a 
part of the Constitution, and may be called out into act and en- 
ergy, whenever there is occasion, and whenever those who con- 
jure up that spirit will choose to abide the consequences. It is 
wise to permit its legal existence : it is much wiser to continue 
it a legal existence only. So truly has prudence (constituted 
as the god of this lower world ) the entire dominion over every 
exercise of power committed into its hands! And yet I have 
lived to see prudence and conformity to circumstances wholly 

7 The Convocation of the Clergy, with its Upper and Lower Houses, is the 
ancient Church Legislature of England. For nearly two hundred years all its 
laAV-making functions have been practically exercised by Parliament; though 
its formal existence is still kept up, as described in the text. In its later deal- 
ings with actual business, it grew to be such an unmanageable incendiary, so 
gusty and tempestuous Avith theological feuds and rancours, that the nation be- 
came afraid to trust it with any actual power. 



not- 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 35 

set at nought in our late controversies, and treated as if they 
were th e mos t conte m ptibl e and irration al of all thin gs . I h a ve 
heard it an hundred times very gravely alleged that, in order to 
keep power in mind, it was necessary, by preference, to exert it 
in those very points in which it was most likely to he resisted 
and the least likely to be productive of any advantage. 

These were the considerations, Gentlemen, which led me 
early to think that, in the comprehensive dominion which the 
Divine Providence had put into our hands, instead of troubling 
our understandings with speculations concerning the unity of 
empire and the identity or distinction of legislative powers, 
and inflaming our passions with the heat and pride of contro- 
versy, it was our duty, in ail soberness, to conform our govern- 
ment to the character and circumstances of the several people 
who composed this mighty and strangely-diversified mass. I 
never was wild enough to conceive that one method would serve 
for the whole ; that the natives of Hindostan and those of Vir- 
ginia could be ordered in the same manner, or that the Cutchery 
court 8 and the grand jury of Salem could be regulated on a sim- 
ilar plan. I was persuaded that government was a practical 
thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish 
out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the schemes of vision- 
ary politicians. Our business was to rule, not to wrangle ; and 
it would have been a poor compensation that we had triumphed 
in a dispute, whilst we lost an empire. 

If there be one fact in the world perfectly clear, it is this, — 
''that the disposition of the people of America is wholly averse 
to any other than a free government" ; and this is indication 
enough to any honest statesman how he ought to adapt what- 
ever power he finds in his hands to their casje. If any ask me 
what a free government is, I answer that, for any practical pur- 
pose, it is what the people think so, — and that they, and not I, 
are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter. 
It' they practically allow me a greater degree of authority over 
them than is consistent with any correct ideas of perfect free- 
dom, I ought to thank them for so great a trust, and not to en- 
deavour to prove from thence that they have reasoned amiss, 
and that, having gone so far, by analogy they must hereafter 
have no enjoyment but by my pleasure. 

If we had seen this done by any others, we should have con- 
cluded them far gone in madness. It is melancholy, as well as 
ridiculous, to observe the kind of reasoning with which the 
public has been amused, in order to divert our minds from the 

8 Cutch is the name of a province, and also of a gulf, on the western coast of 
Hindostan, near the mouths of the river Indus. 




36 BUKKE. 

common sense of our American policy. There are people who 
have split and anatomized the doctrine of free government, as 
if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical liberty 
and necessity, and not a matter of moral prudence and natural 
feeling. They have disputed whether liberty be a positive or a 
negative idea ; whether it does not consist in being governed by 
laws, without considering what are the laws, or who are the 
makers ; whether man has any rights by Nature ; and whether 
all the property he enjoys be not the alms of his government, 
and his life itself their favour and indulgence. Others, cor- 
rupting religion as these have perverted philosophy, contend 
that Christians are redeemed into captivity, and the blood of 
the Saviour of mankind has been shed to make them the slaves 
of a few proud and insolent sinners. These shocking extremes 
provoking to extremes of another kind, speculations are let 
loose as destructive to all authority as the former are to all free- 
dom ; and every government is called tyranny and usurpation 
which is not formed on their fancies. In this manner the stir- 
rers-up of this contention, not satisfied with distracting our de- 
pendencies and filling them with blood and slaughter, are cor- 
rupting our understandings : they are endeavouring to tear up, 
along with practical liberty, all the foundations of human 
society, all equity and justice, religion and order. 

Civil freedom, Gentlemen, is not, as many have endeavoured 
to persuade you, a thing that lies hid in the depth of abstruse 
science. It is a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract specula- 
tion ; and all the just reasoning that can be upon it is of so 
coarse a texture as perfectly to suit the ordinary capacities of 
those who are to enjoy, and of those who are to defend it. Far 
from any resemblance to those propositions in geometry and 
metaphysics whicn admit no medium, but must be true or false 
in all their latitude, social and civil freedom, like all other 
things in common life, are variously mixed and modified, en- 
joyed in very different degrees, and shaped into an infinite di- 
versity of forms, according to the temper and circumstances of 
every community. The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract 
perfection, but its real fault ) obtains nowhere, nor ought to ob- 
tain anywhere ; because extremes, as we all know, in every 
point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life, 
are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty, too, 
must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of re- 
straint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it 
ought to be the constant aim of every wise public counsel to 
find out by cautious experiments, and rational, cool endeavours, 
with how little, not how much, of this restraint the community 
can subsist : for liberty is a good to be improved, and not an 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 37 

evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first 
order, but the vital spring and energy of the State itself, which 
has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it. But, 
whether liberty be advantageous or not, (for I know it is a fash- 
ion to decry the principle,) none will dispute that peace is a 
blessing ; and peace must, in the course of human affairs, be 
frequently bought by some indulgence and toleration at least to 
liberty: for, as the Sabbath (though of Divine institution) was 
made for man, not man for the Sabbath, government, which can 
claim no higher origin or authority, in its exercise at least ought 
to conform to the exigencies of the time, and the temper and 
character of the people with whom it is concerned, and not 
always to attempt violently to bend the people to their theories 
of subjection. The bulk of mankind, on their part, are not ex- 
cessively curious concerning any theories whilst they are really 
happy ; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted State is the 
propensity of the people to resort to them. 

But when subjects, by a long course of such ill conduct, are 
once thoroughly inflamed, and the State itself violently dis- 
tempered, the people must have some satisfaction to their 
feelings more solid than a sophistical speculation on law and 
government. Such was our situation : and such a satisfaction 
was necessary to prevent recourse to arms ; it was necessary 
towards laying them down ; it will be necessary to prevent the 
taking them up again and again. Of what nature this satisfac- 
tion ought to be, I wish it had been the disposition of Parlia- 
ment seriously to consider. It was certainly a deliberation that 
called for the exertion of all their wisdom. 

I am, and ever have been, deeply sensible of the difficulty of 
reconciling the strong presiding power, that is so useful towards 
the conservation of a vast, disconnected, infinitely diversified 
empire, with that liberty and safety of the provinces which they 
must enjoy, (in opinion and practice at least,) or they will not 
be provinces at all. I know, and have long felt, the difficulty of 
reconciling the unwieldy haughtiness of a great ruling nation, 
habituated to command, pampered by enormous wealth, and 
confident from a long course of prosperity and victory, to the 
high spirit of free dependencies, animated with the first glow 
and activity of juvenile heat, and assuming to themselves, as 
their birthright, some part of that very pride which oppresses 
them. They who perceive no difficulty in reconciling these tem- 
pers (which, however, to make peace, must some way or other 
be reconciled) are much above my capacity, or much below the 
magnitude of the business. Of one thing I am perfectly clear, — 
that it is not by deciding the suit, but by compromising the dif- 
ference, that peace can be restored or kept. They who would 



38 BURKE. 

put an end to such quarrels by declaring roundly in favour of 
the whole demands of either party have mistaken, in my hum- 
ble opinion, the office of a mediator. 

The war is now of full two years' standing ; the controversy 
of many more. In different periods of the dispute, different 
methods of reconciliation were to be pursued. I mean to 
trouble you with a short state of things at the most important 
of these periods, in order to give you a more distinct idea of our 
policy with regard to this most delicate of all objects. The col- 
onies were from the beginning subject to the legislature of 
Great Britain on principles which they never examined; and 
Ave permitted to them many local privileges, without asking how 
they agreed with that legislative authority. Modes of admin- 
istration were formed in an insensible and very unsystematic 
manner. But they gradually adapted themselves to the varying 
condition of things. What was first a single kingdom stretched 
into an empire ; and an imperial superintendency, of some kind 
or other, became necessary. Parliament, from a mere represen- 
tative of the people, and a guardian of popular privileges for its 
own immediate constituents, grew into a mighty sovereign. In- 
stead of being a control on the Crown on its own behalf, it com- 
municated a sort of strength to the royal authority, which was 
wanted for the conservation of a new object, but which could 
not be safely trusted to the Crown alone. On the other hand, 
the colonies, advancing by equal steps, and governed by the 
same necessity, had formed within themselves, either by royal 
instruction or royal charter, assemblies so exceedingly resem- 
bling a parliament, in all their forms, functions, and powers, 
that it was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of 
a similar authority. 

At the first designation of these assemblies, they were proba- 
bly not intended for any thing more ( nor perhaps did they think 
themselves much higher) than the municipal corporations 
within this island, to which some at present love to compare 
them. But nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. 
"We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of 
an infant. Therefore, as the colonies prospered and increased 
to a numerous and mighty people, spreading over a very great 
tract of the globe, it was natural that they should attribute to 
assemblies so respectable in their formal constitution some part 
of the dignity of the great nations which they represented. No 
longer tied to by-laws, these assemblies made Acts of all sorts 
and in all cases whatsoever. They levied money, not for paro- 
chial purposes, but upon regular grants to the Crown, following 
all the rules and principles of a parliament, to which they ap- 
proached every day more and more nearly. Those who think 



LETTEE TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 



39 



themselves wiser than Providence and stronger than the course 
of Nature may complain of all this variation, on the one side or 
the other, as ^ their several humours and prejudices may lead 
them. But things could not be otherwise ; and English colo- 
nies must be had on these terms, or not had at all. In the mean 
time neither party felt any inconvenience from this double leg- 
islature, to which they had been formed by imperceptible habits, 
and old custom, the great support of all the governments in the' 
world. Though these two legislatures were sometimes found 
perhaps performing the very same functions, they did not very 
grossly or systematically clash. In all likelihood this arose from 
mere neglect, possibly from the natural operation of things, 
which, left to themselves, generally fall into their proper order. 
But, whatever was the cause, it is certain that a regular reve- 
nue, by the authority of Parliament, for the support of civil and 
military establishments, seems not to have been thought of 
until the colonies were too proud to submit, too strong to be 
forced, too enlightened not to see all the consequences which 
must arise from such a system. 

If ever this scheme of taxation was to be pushed against the 
inclinations of the people, it was evident that discussions must 
arise, which would let loose all the elements that composed this 
double constitution, would show how much each of their mem- 
bers had departed from its original principles, and would dis- 
cover contradictions in each legislature, as well to its own first 
principles as to its relation to the other, very difficult, if not 
absolutely impossible, to be reconciled. 

Therefore, at the first fatal opening of this contest, the wisest 
course seemed to be to put an end as soon as possible to the 
immediate causes of the dispute, and to quiet a discussion, not 
easily settled upon clear principles, and arising from claims 
which pride would permit neither party to abandon, by resort- 
ing as nearly as possible to the old, successful course. A mere 
repeal of the obnoxious tax, with a declaration of the legisla- 
tive authority of this kingdom, was then fully sufficient to pro- 
cure peace to both sides. Man is a creature of habit, and, the 
first breach being of very short continuance, the colonies fell 
back exactly into their ancient state. The Congress has used 
an expression with regard to this pacification which appears to 
me truly significant. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, "the 
colonies fell," says this assembly, "into their ancient state of 
unsuspecting confidence in the mother country." This unsuspecting 
confidence is the true centre of gravity amongst mankind, about 
which all the parts are at rest. It is this unsuspecting confidence 
that removes all difficulties, and reconciles all the contradictions 
which occur in the complexity of all ancient puzzled political 



40 BUKEE. 

establishments. Happy are the rulers which have the secret of 
preserving it ! 

The whole empire has reason to remember with eternal grati- 
tude the wisdom and temper of that man and his excellent 
associates who, to recover this confidence, formed a plan of 
pacification in 1766. That plan, being built upon the nature of 
man and the circumstances and habits of the two countries, and 
not on any visionary speculations, perfectly answered its end, 
as long as it was thought proper to adhere to it. "Without giv- 
ing a rude shock to the dignity ( well or ill understood ) of this 
Parliament, they gave perfect content to our dependencies. 
Had it not been for the mediatorial spirit and talents of that 
great man between such clashing pretentions and passions, we 
should then have rushed headlong (I know what I say) into 
the calamities of that civil war in which, by departing from his 
system, we are at length involved ; and we should have been 
precipitated into that war at a time when circumstances both at 
home and abroad were far, very far, more unfavourable to us 
than they were at the breaking out of the present troubles. 

I had the happiness of giving my first votes in Parliament for 
that pacification. I was one of those almost unanimous mem- 
bers who, in the necessary concessions of Parliament, would as 
much as possible have preserved its authority and respected its 
honour. I could not at once tear from my heart prejudices 
which were dear to me, and which bore a resemblance to virtue. 
I had then, and I have still, my partialities. What Parliament 
gave up I wished to be given as of grace and favour and affec- 
tion, and not as a restitution of stolen goods. High dignity re- 
lented as it was soothed ; and a benignity from old acknowl- 
edged greatness had its full effect on our dependencies. Our 
unlimited declaration of legislative authority produced not a 
single murmur. If this undefined power has become odious 
since that time, and full of horror to the colonies, it is because 
the unsuspicious confidence is lost, and the parental affection, in 
the bosom of whose boundless authority they reposed their 
privileges, is become estranged and hostile. 

It will be asked, if such was then my opinion of the mode of 
pacification, how I came to be the very person who moved, not 
only for a repeal of all the late coercive statutes, but for muti- 
lating, by a positive lav/, the entireness of the legislative power 
of Parliament, and cutting off from it the whole right of taxa- 
tion. I answer, Because a different state of things requires a 
different conduct. When the dispute had gone to these last ex- 
tremities, (which no man laboured more to prevent than I did,) 
the concessions which had satisfied in the beginning could sat- 
isfy no longer ; because the violation of tacit faith required ex- 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 41 

plicit security. The same cause which has introduced ail 
formal compacts and covenants among men made it necessary: 
I mean, habits of soreness, jealousy, and distrust. I parted with 
it as with a limb, but as a limb to save the body: and I would 
have parted with more, if more had been necessary ; any thing 
rather than a fruitless, hopeless, unnatural civil war. This 
mode of yielding would, it is said, give way to independency 
without a war. I am persuaded, from the nature of things, and 
from every information, that it would have had a directly con- 
trary effect. But if it had this effect, I confess that I should 
prefer independency without war to independency with it ; and 
I have so much trust in the inclinations and prejudices of man- 
kind, and so little in any thing else, that I should expect ten 
times more benefit to this kingdom from the affection of 
America, though under a separate establishment, than from her 
perfect submission to the Crown and Parliament, accompanied 
with her terror, disgust, and abhorrence. Bodies tied together 
by so unnatural a bond of union as mutual hatred are only con- 
nected to their ruin. 

One hundred and ten respectable members of Parliament 
voted for that concession. Many not present when the motion 
was made were of the sentiments of those who voted. 1 knew 
it would then have made peace. I am not without hopes that 
it would do so at present, if it were adopted. Ko benefit, no 
revenue, could be lost by it ; something might possibly be 
gained by its consequences. For be fully assured that, of all 
the phantoms that ever deluded the fond hopes of a credulous 
world, a Parliamentary revenue in the colonies is the most per- 
fectly chimerical. Your breaking them to any subjection, far 
from relieving your burdens, (the pretext for this war,) will 
never pay that military force which will be kept up to the de- 
struction of their liberties and yours. I risk nothing in this 
prophecy. 

Gentlemen, you have my opinions on the present state of 
public affairs. Mean as they may be in themselves, your par- 
tiality has made them of some importance. Without troubling 
myself to inquire whether I am under a formal obligation to it, 
I have a pleasure in accounting for my conduct to my constitu- 
ents. I feel warmly on this subject, and I express myself as I 
feel. If I presume to blame any public proceeding, I cannot be 
supposed to be personal. Would to God I could be suspected 
of it I My fault might be greater, but the public calamity 
would be less extensive. If my conduct has not been able to 
make any impression on the warm part of that ancient and pow- 
erful party with whose support I was not honoured at my 



42 



BURKE. 



election, on my side, my respect, regard, and duty to tliem is 
not at all lessened. I owe the gentleman who compose it my 
most humble service in every thing. I hope that, whenever 
any of them were pleased to command me, they found me per- 
fectly equal in my obedience. But flattery and friendship are 
very different things ; and to mislead is not to serve them. I 
cannot purchase the favour of airy man by concealing from him 
what I think his ruin. 

By the favour of my fellow-citizens, I am the representative 
of an honest, well-ordered, virtuous city, — of a people who pre- 
serve more of the original English simplicity and purity of 
manners than perhaps any other. You possess among you sev- 
eral men and magistrates of large and cultivated understandings, 
fit for any employment in any sphere. I do, to the best of my 
power, act so as to make myself worthy of so honourable a 
choice. If I were ready, on any call of my own vanity or in- 
terest, or to answer any election purpose, to forsake principles 
(whatever they are) which I had formed at a mature age, on 
full reflection, and which had been confirmed by long experi- 
ence, I should forfeit the only thing which makes you pardon 
so many errors and imperfections in me. 

Not that I think it fit for any one to rely too much on his 
own understanding, or to be filled with a presumption not 
becoming a Christian man in his own personal stability and 
rectitude. I hope I am far from that vain confidence which 
almost always fails in trial. I know my weakness in all re- 
spects, as much at least as any enemy I have ; and I attempt to 
take security against it. The only method which lias ever been 
found effectual to preserve any man against the corruption of 
nature and example is an habit of life and communication of 
counsels with the most virtuous and public-spirited men of the 
age you live in. Such a society cannot be kept without advan- 
tage, or deserted without shame. For this rule of conduct I 
may be called in reproach apart?/ man; but I- am little affected 
with such aspersions. In the way which they call x>arty I wor- 
ship the Constitution of your fathers ; and I shall never blush 
for my political company. All reverence to honour, all idea of 
what it is, will be lost out of the world, before it can be imputed 
as a fault to any man, that he has been closely connected with 
those incomparable persons, living and dead, with whom for 
eleven years I have constantly thought and acted. If I have 
wandered out of the paths of rectitude into those of interested 
faction, it was in company with the Saviles, the Dowdeswells, 
the Wentworths, the Bentincks ; 9 with the Lenoxes, the Man- 



9 Dentinal- was the family name of flie Duke of Portland, then one of the 



LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL. 43 

chesters, the Keppels, the Saunderses ; with the temperate, 
permanent, hereditary virtue of the whole House of Caven- 
dish: 1 names among which some have extended your fame 
and empire in arms, and all have fought the battle of your 
liberties in fields not less glorious. These, and many more like 
these, grafting public principles on private honour, have re- 
deemed the present age, and would have adorned the most 
splendid period in your history. Where could any man, con- 
scious of his own inability to act alone, and willing to act as he 
ought to do, have arranged himself better? If any one thinks 
this kind of society to be taken up as the best method of grati- 
fying low personal pride or ambitious interest, he is mistaken, 
and knows nothing of the world. 

Preferring this connection, I do not mean to detract in the 
slightest degree from others. There are some of those whom I 
admire at something of a greater distance, with whom I have 
had the happiness also perfectly to agree, in almost all the par- 
ticulars in which I have differed with some successive adminis- 
trations ; and they are such as it never can be reputable to any 
government to reckon among its enemies. 

I hope there are none of you corrupted with the doctrine 
taught by wicked men for the worst purposes, and received by 
the malignant credulity of envy aud ignorance, which is, that 
the men who act upon the public stage are all alike, all equally 
corrupt, all influenced by no other views than the sordid lure of 
salary and pension. The thing I know by experience to be 
false. Never expecting to find perfection in men, and not 
looking for Divine attributes in created beings, in my commerce 
with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue. I 
have seen not a little public spirit, a real subordination of 
interest to duty, and a decent and regulated sensibility to hon- 
est fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces 
( whether in a greater or less number than former times I know 
not) daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? 
Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the 

leading Whig peers. Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquess of Rockingham, 
"was the leading Whig peer. When the Whigs came into power, first in 17(55, and 
again in 17S2, he was called to the post of Prime Minister. William Dowdeswell 
•was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first Rockingham administration. A 
man of no pretension or show, but of great ability and -worth, who stood 
shoulder to shoulder with Burke all through those years of struggle, till his 
death in 177G. 

1 Cavendish was, as it still is. the family name of the Duke of Devonshire. 
Lord John Cavendish, brother of the Duke, was one of the leading Whigs in the 
House of Commons. He Mas Chancellor of the Exchequer in the second Rock- 
ingham administration, ami was one of Burke's warmest and staunchest per- 
sonal friends. 



u 



BURKE. 



world, because of the' mixture of evil that will always be in it? 
The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the 
value. They who raise suspicions on the good on account of the 
behaviour of ill men are of the party of the latter. The com- 
mon cant is no justification for taking this party. I have been 
deceived, they say, by Titius and Mcevius; I have been the dupe 
of this pretender or of that mountebank ; and I can trust ap- 
pearances no longer. But my credulity and want of discern- 
ment cannot, as I conceive, amount to a fair presumption 
against any man's integrity. A conscientious person would 
rather doubt his own judgment than condemn his species. He 
would say, " I have observed without attention, or judged upon 
erroneous maxims ; I trusted to profession, when I ought to 
have attended to conduct." Such a man will grow wise, not 
malignant, by his acquaintance with the world. But he that 
accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he 
is sure to convict only one. In truth, I should much rather 
admit those whom at any time I have disrelished the most to 
be patterns of perfection than seek a consolation to my own 
unworthiness in a general communion of depravity with all 
about me. 

That this ill-natured doctrine should be preached by the mis- 
sionaries of a Court I do not wonder. It answers their purpose. 
But that it should be heard among those who pretend to be 
strong asserters of liberty is not only surprising, but hardly 
natural. This moral levelling is a servile principle. It leads to 
practical passive obedience far better than all the doctrines 
which the pliant accommodation of- theology to power has ever 
produced. It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible 
resistance, but even of civil opposition. It disposes men to an 
abject submission, not by opinion, which may be shaken by argu- 
ment or altered by passion, but by the strong ties of public and 
private interest. For, if all men who act in a public situation 
are equally selfish, corrupt, and venal, what reason can be given 
for desiring any sort of change, which, besides the evils which 
must attend all changes, can be productive of no possible ad- 
vantage ? The active men in the State are true samples of the 
mass. If they are universally depraved, the commonwealth 
itself is not sound. We may amuse ourselves with talking as 
much as we i>lease of the virtue of middle or humble life ; that 
is, we may place our confidence in the virtue of those who have 
never been tried. But if the persons who are continually 
emerging out of that sphere be no belter than those whom birth 
has placed above it, what hopes are there in the remainder of 
the body which is to furnish the perpetual succession of the 
State ? All who have ever written on government are unani- 



LETTEH TO THE SHEKIFFS OF BEISTOL. 45 

mous, that among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot 
long exist. And indeed how is it possible, when those who are 
to make the laws, to guard, to enforce, or to obey them, are, by 
a tacit confederacy of manners, indisposed to the spirit of all 
generous and noble institutions ? 

I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am 
sure that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy 
is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time, and 
to have some more correct standard of judging what that best is 
than the transient and uncertain favour of a Court. If once we 
are able to find, and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an 
union of such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed 
to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of human 
passions must join with that society, and cannot long be joined 
without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as 
well as vice by contact ; and the public stock of honest, manly 
principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scru- 
tinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough 
( and for a worthy man perhaps too much ) to deal out its infa- 
my to convicted guilt and declared apostasy. 

This, Gentlemen, has been from the beginning the rule of my 
conduct ; and I mean to continue it, as long as such a body as I 
have described can by any possibility be kept together: fori 
should think it the most dreadful of all offences, not only 
towards the present generation, but to all the future, if I were 
to do any thing which could make the minutest breach in this 
great conservatory of free principles. Those who perhaps have 
the same intentions, but are separated by some little political 
animosities, will, I hope, discern at last how little conducive it 
is to any rational purpose to lower its reputation. For my part, 
Gentlemen, from much experience, from no little thinking, and 
from comparing a great variety of things, I am thoroughly per- 
suaded that the last hope of preserving the spirit of the Eng- 
lish Constitution, or of reuniting the dissipated members of the 
English race upon a common plan of tranquillity and liberty, 
does entirely depend on their firm and lasting union, and above 
all on their keeping themselves from that despair which is so 
very apt to fall on those whom a violence of character and a 
mixture of- ambitious views do not support through a long, 
painful, and unsuccessful struggle. 

There never, Gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfast- 
ness of some men has been put to so sore a trial. It is not very 
difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest ; but 
the separation of fame and virtue is a harsh divorce. Liberty 
is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Con- 
tending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit 



46 BURKE. 

of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality. The 
principles of our forefathers become suspected to us, because 
we see them animating the present opposition of our children. 
The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom appear 
much more shocking to us than the base vices which are gener- 
ated from the rankness of servitude. Accordingly the least re- 
sistance to power appears more inexcusable in our eyes than the 
greatest abuses of authority. All dread of a standing military 
force is looked upon as a superstitious panic. All shame of call- 
ing in foreigners and savages in a civil contest is worn off. We 
grow indifferent to the consequences inevitable to ourselves 
from the plan of ruling half the empire by a mercenary sword. 
We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering over our 
countrymen is love to our country, that those who hate civil war 
abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of 
lenity, moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those 
who depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the State. 

It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation 
which breeds such notions and dispositions without some great 
alteration in the national character. Those ingenuous and feel- 
ing minds who are so fortified against all other things, and so 
unarmed to whatever approaches in the shape of disgrace, find- 
ing these principles, which they considered as sure means of 
honour, to be grown into disrepute, will retire disheartened and 
disgusted. Those of a more robust make, the bold, able, ambi- 
tious men, who pay some of their court to power through the 
people, and substitute the voice of transient opinion in the place 
of true glory, will give-in to the general mode ; and those supe- 
rior understandings which ought to correct vulgar prejudice 
will confirm and aggravate its errors. Many things have been 
long operating towards a gradual change in our principles ; but 
this American war has done more in a very few years than all 
the other causes could have effected in a century. It is there- 
fore not on its own separate account, but because of its attend- 
ant circumstances, that I consider its continuance, or its ending 
in any way but that of an honourable and liberal accommoda- 
tion, as the greatest evil which can befall us. For that reason 
I have troubled you with this long letter. For that reason I en- 
treat you, again and again, neither to be persuaded, shamed, or 
frighted out of the principles that have hitherto led so many of 
you to abhor the war, its cause, and its consequences. Let us 
not be amongst the first who renounce the maxims of our fore- 
fathers. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, 

Your most obedient and faithful humble servant, 

Edmund Burke. 

Reaconsfield, April 3, 1777. 



HOW TO RETAIL THE COLONIES. 47 



HOW TO RETAIN THE COLONIES. 2 

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows 
from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privi- 
leges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as 
air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep 
the idea of their civil rights associated with your government, — 
they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven 
will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it 
be once understood that your government may be one thing 
and their privileges another, that these two things may exist 
without any mutual relation, — the cement is gone, the cohesion 
is loosened, and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution. 
As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority 
of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple 
consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race 
and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their 
faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends 
you will have ; the more ardently they love liberty, the more 
perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have any- 
where. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have 
it from Spain ; they may have it from Prussia. But, until you 
become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural 
dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the 
commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is 
the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce 
of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of 
the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you 
break that sole bond which originally made, and must still pre- 
serve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an 
imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affida- 
vits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, 3 are 
what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream 
that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your sus- 
pending clauses, are the things that hold together the great con- 
texture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make 
your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, 

2 This piece and the next are from Burke's Speech on Conciliation with Amer- 
ica. They are so good in themselves, that they ought to have a place in this 
selection; and their close affinity with the preceding paper is reason enough 
for inserting them here. The speech from which they are taken was delivered 
in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775. 

3 A clearance is an official paper certifying that a ship has cleared at the cus- 
tom-house, that is, done all that is required of it, and so is authorized to sail. A 
cocket is a custom-house certificate, granted to merchants, showing that goods 
have been duly entered, and that the duties on them have been paid. 



48 



BUBKE. 



it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life 
and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitu- 
tion, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, 
unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down 
to the minutest member. 

Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us here in 
England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land-Tax Act 
which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the 
Committee of Supply which gives you your army? or that it is 
the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline ? 
]STo ! surely, no ! It is the love of the people ; it is their attach- 
ment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake 
they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your 
army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedi- 
ence without which your army would be a base rabble and your 
navy nothing but rotten timber. 

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical 
to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians 
who have no place among us ; — a sort of people who think that 
nothing exists but what is gross and material ; and who there- 
fore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great move- 
ment of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. 
But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and 
master principles, which hi the opinion of such men as I have 
mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth every 
thing, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the 
truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little minds go ill 
together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with 
zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we 
ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America with 
the old warning of the Church, Sursum corda!* We ought to 
elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the 
order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity 
of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilder- 
ness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive 
and the only honourable conquests, not by destroying, but by 
promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human 
race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an Amer- 
ican empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; 
English privileges alone will make it all it can be. 



I 



4 These words are from the old Latiu Communion-Office of the Church. 
English of them is, "Lift up your hearts." 



The 



THE PEOPLE OF NEW ENGLAND. 49 



THE PEOPLE OF NEW ENGLAND. 

I pass to the colonies in another point of view, — their agri- 
culture. This they have prosecuted with such a spirit, that, 
besides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their 
annual export of grain, comprehending rice, has some years ago 
exceeded a million in value. Of their last harvest I am per- 
suaded they will export much more. At the beginning of the 
century some of these colonies imported corn from the mother 
country. For some time past the Old World has been fed from 
the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a 
desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial 
piety, with a Eoman charity, had not put the full breast of its 
youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. 

As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea 
by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your 
bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for they 
seemed even to excite your envy ; and yet the spirit by which 
that enterprising employment has been exercised ought rather, 
in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And 
pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other 
parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New 
England have of late carried on the whale-fishery. Whilst we 
follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold 
them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's 
Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath 
the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite 
region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged 
under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which 
seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of 
national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the prog- 
ress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat 
more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both 
the poles. We know that, whilst some of them draw the line 
and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the 
longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of 
Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No cli- 
mate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the persever- 
ance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous 
and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most 
perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has 
been pushed by this recent people, — a people who are still, as 
it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone 
of manhood. When I contemplate these things, — when I know 
that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of 



50 BUEKE. 

ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by 
the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but 
that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature 
has been suffered to take her own way to perfection, — when I 
reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have 
been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presump- 
tion in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away 
within me, — my rigour relents, — I pardon something to the 
spirit of liberty. 



SPEECH OST ECONOMICAL EEEOEM. 5 

Mr. Speaker: I rise, in acquittal of my engagement to the 
House, in obedience to the strong and just requisition of my 
constituents, and, I am persuaded, in conformity to the unani- 
mous wishes of the whole nation, to submit to the wisdom of 
Parliament "A Plan of Reform in the Constitution of Several 
Parts of the Public Economy." 

I have endeavoured that this plan should include, in its exe- 
cution, a considerable reduction of improper expense ; that it 
should effect a conversion of unprofitable titles into a produc- 
tive estate ; that it should lead to, and indeed almost compel, a 
provident administration of such sums of public money as must 
remain under discretionary trusts ; that it should render the 
incurring of debts on the civil establishment (which must ulti- 
mately affect national strength and national credit) so very dif- 
ficult as to become next to impracticable. 

Eut what, I confess, was uppermost with me, what I bent the 
whole force of my mind to, was the reduction of that corrupt 
influence which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality 
and of all disorder, — which loads us more than millions of 
debt, — which takes away vigour from our arms, wisdom from 
our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from 
the most venerable parts of our Constitution. 

Sir, I assure you very solemnly, and with a very clear con- 
science, that nothing in the world has led me to such an under- 
taking but my zeal for the honour of this House, and the 
settled, habitual, systematic affection I bear to the cause and 
to the principles of government. 

5 The original title, in full, of this speech is, " Speech on presenting to the 
House of Commons (on the 11th of February, 17S0) a Plan for the better Security 
of the Independence of Parliament, and the economical Reformation of the civil 
and other Establishments." — Perhaps I should note that Burke uses the word 
economy in its original sense of order or arrangement. 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 51 

I enter perfectly into the nature and consequences of my at- 
tempt, and I advance to it with a tremor that shakes me to the 
inmost fibre of my frame. I feel that I engage in a business, in 
itself most ungracious, totally wide of the course of prudent 
conduct, and, I really think, the most completely adverse that 
can be imagined to the natural turn and temper of my own 
mind. I know that all parsimony is of a quality approaching to 
unkindness, and that (on some person or other) every reform 
must operate as a sort of punishment. Indeed, the whole class 
of the severe and restrictive virtues is at a market almost too 
high for humanity. What is worse, there are very few of those 
virtues which are not capable of being imitated, and even out- 
done in many of their most striking effects, by the worst of 
vices. Malignity and envy will carve much more deeply, and 
finish much more sharply, in the work of retrenchment, than 
frugality and providence. I clo not, therefore, wonder that gen- 
tlemen have kept away from such a task, as well from good- 
nature as from prudence. Private feeling might, indeed, be 
overborne by legislative reason ; and a man of a long-sighted 
and a strong-nerved humanity might bring himself not so much 
to consider from whom he takes a superfluous enjoyment as for 
whom in the end he may preserve the absolute necessaries of 
life. 

But it is much more easy to reconcile this measure to human- 
ity than to bring it to any agreement with prudence. I do not 
mean that little, selfish, pitiful, bastard thing which sometimes 
goes by the name of a family in which it is not legitimate and to 
which it is a disgrace ; — I mean even that public and enlarged 
prudence which, apprehensive of being disabled from rendering 
acceptable services to the world, withholds itself from those 
that are invidious. Gentlemen who are, with me, verging 
towards the decline of life, and are apt to form their ideas of 
kings from kings of former times, might dread the anger of a 
reigning prince; — they who are more provident of the future, 
or by being young are more interested in it, might tremble at 
the resentment of the successor ; they might see a long, dull, 
dreary, unvaried vista of despair and exclusion, for half a cen- 
tury, before them. This is no pleasant prospect at the outset 
of a political journey. 

Besides this, Sir, the private enemies to be made in all at- 
tempts of this kind are innumerable ; and their enmity will be 
the more bitter, and the more dangerous too, because a sense 
of dignity will oblige them to conceal the cause of their resent- 
ment. Yery few men of great families and extensive connec- 
tions but will feel the smart of a cutting reform, in some close 
relation, some bosom friend, some pleasant acquaintance, some 



52 BURKE. 

dear, protected dependant. Emolument is taken from some ; 
patronage from others ; objects of pursuit from all. Men forced 
into an involuntary independence will abhor the authors of a 
blessing which in their eyes has so very near a resemblance to 
a curse. When officers are removed, and the offices remain, 
you may set the gratitude of some against the anger of others, 
you may oppose the friends you oblige against the enemies you 
provoke. But services of the present sort create no attach- 
ments. The individual good felt in a public benefit is compara- 
tively so small, comes round through such an involved labyrinth 
of intricate and tedious revolutions, whilst a present personal 
detriment is so heavy, where it falls, and so instant in its oper- 
ation, that the cold commendation of a public advantage never 
was and never will be a match for the quick sensibility of a 
private loss ; and you may depend upon it, Sir, that, when many 
people have an interest in railing, sooner or later they will 
bring a considerable degree of unpopularity upon any measure. 
So that, for the present at least, the reformation will operate 
against the reformers ; and revenge (as against them at the least) 
will produce all the effects of corruption. 

This, Sir, is almost always the case, where the plan has com- 
plete success. But how stands the matter in the mere at- 
tempt? Nothing, you know, is more common than for men to 
wish and call loudly too, for a reformation, who, when it ar- 
rives, do by no means like the severity of its aspect. Reforma- 
tion is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance 
in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the 
abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of 
their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they be- 
come scrupulous, they become captious ; and every man has his 
separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the 
gray ; one point must be given up to one, another point must be 
yielded to another: nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own 
principle ; the whole is so frittered down and disjointed, that 
scarcely a trace of the original scheme remains. Thus, between 
the resistance of power and the unsystematical process of pop- 
ularity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both exposed, 
and the poor reformer is hissed off the stage both by friends 
and foes. 

Observe, Sir, that the apology for my undertaking (an apol- 
ogy which, though long, is no longer than necessary) is not 
grounded on my want of the fullest sense of the difficult and 
invidious nature of the task I undertake. I risk odium, if I 
succeed, and contempt, if I fail. My excuse must rest in mine 
and your conviction of the absolute, urgent necessity there is that 
something of the kind should be done. If there is any sacrifice 



SPEECH ON" ECONOMICAL REFORM. ■ 53 

to be made, either of estimation or of fortune, the smallest is 
the best. Commanders-in-chief are not to be put upon the for- 
lorn hope. But, indeed, it is necessary that the attempt should 
be made. It is necessary from our own political circumstances ; 
it is necessary from the operations of the enemy ; it is necessary 
from the demands of the people, whose desires, when they do 
not militate with the stable and eternal rules of justice and 
reason, (rules which are above us and above them,) ought to be 
as a law to a House of Commons. 

As to our circumstances, I do not mean to aggravate the 
difficulties of them by the strength of any colouring whatso- 
ever. On the contrary, I observe, and observe with pleasure, 
that our affairs rather wear a more promising aspect than they 
did on the opening of this session. We have had some leading 
successes. But those who rate them at the highest (higher a 
great deal, indeed, than I dare to do) are of opinion that, upon 
the ground of such advantages, we cannot at this time hope to 
make any treaty of peace which would not be ruinous and com- 
pletely disgraceful. In such an anxious state of things, if 
dawnings of success serve to animate our diligence, they are 
good ; if they tend to increase our presumption, they are worse 
than defeats. The state of our affairs shall, then, be as promis- 
ing as any one may choose to conceive it : it is, however, but 
promising. We must recollect that, with but half of our natu- 
ral strength, we are at war against confederated powers who 
have singly threatened us with ruin ; we must recollect that, 
whilst we are left naked on one side, our other flank is un- 
covered by any alliance ; that, whilst we are weighing and 
balancing our successes against our losses, we are accumulating 
debt to the amount of at least fourteen millions in the year. 
That loss is certain. 

1 have no wish to deny that our successes are as brilliant as 
any one chooses to make them ; our resources, too, may, for 
me, be as unfathomable as they are represented. Indeed, they 
are just whatever the people possess and will submit to pay. 
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new 
impositions ; any bungler can add to the old. But is it alto- 
gether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than 
the patience of those who are to bear them ? 

All I claim upon the subject of your resources is this, — that 
they are not likely to be increased by wasting them. I think I 
shall be permitted to assume that a system of frugality will not 

6 The " successes " here referred to were those gained, in 1779, by the British 
troops under General Prevost, in Georgia and South Carolina; which Avere so 
considerable, that the cause of independence seemed well-nigh lost in those 
States. 



54: BURKE. 

lessen your riches, whatever they may be. I believe it will not 
be hotly disputed, that those resources which lie heavy on the 
subject ought not to be objects of preference, — that they ought 
not to be the very first choice, to an honest representative of the 
people. 

This is all, Sir, that I shall say upon our circumstances and 
our resources : I mean to say a little more on the operations of 
the enemy, because this matter seems to me very natural in our 
present deliberation. When I look to the other side of the 
water, I cannot help recollecting what Pyrrhus said, on recon- 
noitring the Roman camp: "These barbarians have nothing 
barbarous in their discipline." When I look, as I have pretty 
carefully looked, into the proceedings of the French King, I 
am sorry to say it, I see nothing of the character and genius of 
arbitrary finance, none of the bold frauds of bankrupt power, 
none of the wild struggles and plunges of despotism in distress, 
— no lopping off from the capital of debt, no suspension of 
interest, no robbery under the name of loan, no raising the 
value, no debasing the substance, of the coin. I see neither 
Louis the Fourteenth nor Louis the Fifteenth. On the con- 
trary, I behold, with astonishment, rising before me, by the 
very hands of arbitrary power, and in the very midst of war and 
confusion, a regular, methodical system of public credit; I 
behold a fabric laid on the natural and solid foundations of 
trust and confidence among men, and rising, by fair gradations, 
order over order, according to the just rules of symmetry and 
art. What a reverse of things ! Principle, method, regularity, 
economy, frugality, justice to individuals, and care of the peo- 
ple are the resources with which France makes war upon Great 
Britain. God avert the omen ! But if we should see any genius 
in war and politics arise in France to second what is done in the 
bureau! 1 turn my eyes from the consequences. 

The noble lord in the blue riband, 7 last year, treated all this 
with contempt. He never could conceive it possible that the 
French Minister of Finance could go through that year with a 
loan of but seventeen hundred thousand pounds, and that he 
should be able to fund that loan without any tax. 8 The second 

7 So Burke commonly designates Lord North, who was then Prime Minister, 
and who seems to have worn " the blue riband " as a badge of some high honour 
he had received; so that to designate him thus was merely an act of honest 
courtesy. Lord North, though his long administration was a sad failure, was 
himself an able, pleasant, amiable man; and Burke and he Avere personally on 
good terms. 

8 To fund a loan or a debt, is to provide and set apart means, by special tax 
or otherwise, for regular payment of the interest on it. — M. Necker, at that time 
Minister of Finance to Louis the Sixteenth, was carrying forward various deep 
and comprehensive changes in his department, which seemingly promised a 






SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. 55 

year, however, opens the very same scene. A small loan, a 
loan of no more than two millions five hundred thousand 
pounds, is to carry our enemies through the service of this year 
also. ISTo tax is raised to fund that debt ; no tax is raised for 
the current services. I am credibly informed that there is no 
anticipation whatsoever. Compensations are correctly made. 9 
Old debts continue to pe sunk as in the time of profound peace. 
Even payments which their treasury had been authorized to 
suspend during the time of war are not suspended. 

A general reform, executed through every department of the 
revenue, creates an annual income of more than half a million, 
whilst it facilitates and simplifies all the functions of adminis- 
tration. 1 The King's household — at the remotest avenues to 
which all reformation has been hitherto stopped, that house- 
hold which has been the stronghold of prodigality, the virgin 
fortress which was never before attacked — has been not only 
not defended, but it has, even in the forms, been surrendered 
by the King to the economy of his Minister. ]STo capitulation ; 
no reserve. Economy has entered in triumph into the public 
splendour of the monarch, into his private amusements, into 
the appointments of his nearest and highest relations. Econ- 
omy and public spirit have made a beneficent and an honest 
spoil: they have plundered from extravagance and luxury, for 
the use of substantial service, a revenue of near four hundred 
thousand pounds. The reform of the finances, joined to this 
reform of the Court, gives to the public nine hundred thousand 
pounds a-year, and upwards. 

The minister who does these things is a great man ; but the 

new era of credit to the French government; and he had made such headway, 
that he could borrow, in the midst of war, on easier terms than previous Minis- 
ters had obtained in time of peace. Burke's glowing tribute to his spirit and 
his measures was no less sincere than eloquent. But Necker's bold and benefi- 
cent scheme soon broke down, though chiefly by reason of the corrupt interests 
and selfish prejudices with which it collided. 

9 Compensations, as the word is here used, are equivalents made to persons 
whose offices are abolished, or Avho in any way suffer by new arrangements. 

1 One of Necker's leading measures was to concentrate the responsibility of 
revenue officials, so as to come at an annual account of receipts and expendi- 
tures, which had long been impossible, because the responsibility was so widely 
scattered. And he had a general list of the pensions made out; which, by 
revealing the abuses and duplications of all kinds hidden in the financial confu- 
sion, induced the King to authorize a reform. He also reduced the number of 
receivers-general from forty-eight to twelve, and of treasurers of war from 
twenty-seven to two, and made them all immediately dependent on the Minister 
of Finance. These are some particulars of the simplification he introduced. 
Therewithal more than five hundred sinecure offices, involving special privileges 
with respect to taxation, were cut away in the King's household, the King him- 
self cheerfully consenting to the measure. 



56 BURKE. 



We 



king who desires that they should be done is a far greater 
must do justice to our enemies: these are the acts of a patriot 
king. I am not in dread of the vast armies of Trance ; I am not 
in dread of the gallant spirit of its brave and numerous nobil- 
ity ; I am not alarmed even at the great navy which has been 
so miraculously created. All these things Louis the Fourteenth 
had before. With all these things, the French monarchy has 
more than once fallen prostrate at the feet of the public faith 
of Great Britain. It was the want of public credit which dis- 
abled France from recovering after her defeats, or recovering 
even from her victories and triumphs. It was a prodigal Court, 
it was an ill-ordered revenue, that sapped the foundations. of all 
her greatness. Credit cannot exist under the arm of necessity. 
Necessity strikes at credit, I allow, with a heavier and quicker 
blow under an arbitrary monarchy than under a limited and 
balanced government ; but still necessity and credit are natural 
enemies, and cannot be long reconciled in any situation. From 
necessity and corruption, a free State may lose the spirit of that 
complex constitution which is the foundation of confidence. 
On the other hand, I am far from being sure that a monarchy, 
when once it is properly regulated, may not for a long time fur- 
nish a foundation for credit upon the solidity of its maxims, 
though it afford no ground of trust in its institutions, I am 
afraid I see in England, and in France, something like a begin- 
ning of both these things. I wish I may be found in a mistake. 

This very short and very imperfect state 2 of what is now go- 
ing on in France (the last circumstances of which I received in 
about eight days after the registry of the edict 3 ) I do not, Sir, 
lay before you for any invidious purpose. It is in order to ex- 
cite in us the spirit of a noble emulation. Let the nations make 
war upon each other, (since we must make war,) not with a low 
and vulgar malignity, but by a competition of virtues. This 
is the only way by which both parties can gain by war. The 
French have imitated us : let us, through them, imitate our- 
selves, — ourselves in our better and happier days. If public 
frugality, under whatever men, or in whatever mode of govern- 
ment, is national strength, it is a strength which our enemies 
are in possession of before us. 

Sir, I am well aware that the state and the result of the 
French economy which I have laid before you are even now 

2 State for statement; a frequent usage with Burke. 

3 This " edict " was a decree of the Council, recorded as such January 9, 1730. 
The most important reform made thereby was a change from the old system of 
farming out the customs to a direct administration of them by the government. 
Martin says that by this change " the State gained on the spot 14,000,000 francs a 
year." 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL EEFORM. 57 

lightly treated by some who ought never to speak but from in- 
formation. Pains have not been spared to represent them as 
impositions on the public. Let me tell you, Sir, that the crea- 
tion of a navy, and a two years' war without taxing, are a very 
singular species of imposture. But be it so. For what end 
does aSTecker carry on this delusion ? Is it to lower the estima- 
tion of the Crown he serves, and to render his own administra- 
tion contemptible ? JSTo ! !No ! He is conscious that the sense 
of mankind is so clear and decided in favour of economy, and of 
the weight and value of its resources, that he turns himself to 
every species of fraud and artifice to obtain the mere reputation 
of it. Men do not affect a conduct that tends to their discredit. 
Let us, then, get the better of Monsieur Keeker in his own 
way ; let us do in reality what he does only in pretence ; let us 
turn his French tinsel into English gold. Is, then, the mere 
opinion and appearance of frugality and good management of 
such use to France, and is the substance to be so mischievous to 
England ? Is the very constitution of Nature so altered by a 
sea of twenty miles, that economy should give power on the 
Continent, and that profusion should give it here ? For God's 
sake, let not this be the only fashion of France which we refuse 
to copy I 

To the last kind of necessity, the desires of the people, I have 
but a very few words to say. The Ministers seem to contest 
this point, and affect to doubt whether the people do really de- 
sire a plan of economy in the civil government. Sir, this is too 
ridiculous. It is impossible that they should not desire it. It 
is impossible that a prodigality which draws its resources from 
their indigence should be pleasing to them. Little factions of 
pensioners, and their dependants, may talk another language. 
But the voice of Nature is against them, and it will be heard. 
The people of England will not, they cannot, take it kindly, 
that representatives should refuse to their constituents what an 
absolute sovereign voluntarily offers to his subjects. The ex- 
pression of the petitions is, 4 that, "before any new burdens are 
laid upon this country, effectual measures be taken by this House to 
inquire into and correct the gross abuses in the expenditure of public 
money." 

This has been treated by the noble lord in the blue riband as 
a wild, factious language. It happens, however, that the people, 
in their address to us, use, almost word for word, the same 
terms as the King of France uses in addressing himself to his 

4 Not long before the delivery of this speech, the House of Commons had 
been literally flooded with petitions from all parts of the kingdom, calling for 
some such reform as Burke is here urging. 



58 BUKKE. 

people ; and it differs only as it falls short of the French King's 
idea of what is due to his subjects. "To convince," says he, 
" our faithful subjects of the desire we entertain not to recur to new 
impositions, until we have first exhausted all the resources, 
which order and economy can possibly supply," &c, &c. 

These desires of the people of England, which come far short 
of the voluntary concessions of the King of Prance, are mod- 
erate indeed. They only contend that we should interweave 
some economy with the taxes with which we have chosen to 
begin the war. They request, not that you should rely upon 
economy exclusively, but that you should give it rank and prece- 
dence, in the order of the ways and means of this single session. 

But, if it were possible that the desires of our constituents, 
desires which are at once so natural and so very much tempered 
and subdued, should have no weight with an House of Com- 
mons which has its eye elsewhere, I would turn my eyes to the 
very quarter to which theirs are directed. I would reason this 
matter with the House on the mere policy of the question ; and 
I would undertake to prove that an early dereliction of abuse is 
the direct interest of government, — of government taken ab- 
stractedly from its duties, and considered merely as a system 
intending its own conservation. 

If there is any one eminent criterion which above all the rest 
distinguishes a wise government from an administration weak 
and improvident, it is this, — "well to know the best time and 
manner of yielding what 'it is impossible to keep." There have 
been, Sir, and there are, many who choose to chicane with their 
situation rather than be instructed by it. Those gentlemen ar- 
gue against every desire of reformation upon the principles of a 
criminal prosecution. It is enough for them to justify their ad- 
herence to a pernicious system, that it is not of their contriv- 
ance, — that it is an inheritance of absurdity, derived to them 
from their ancestors, — that they can make out a long and un- 
broken pedigree of mismanagers that have gone before them. 
They are proud of the antiquity of their House ; and they de- 
fend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance, 
afraid of derogating from their nobility, and carefully avoiding 
a sort of blot in their scutcheon, which they think would de- 
grade them for ever. 

It was thus that the unfortunate Charles the First defended 
himself on the practice of the Stuart who went before him, and 
of all the Tudors. His partisans might have gone to the Plan- 
tagenets. They might have found bad examples enough, both 
abroad and at home, that could have shown an ancient and 
illustrious descent. But there is a time when men will not 
suffer bad things because their ancestors have suffered worse. 



SPEECH OJs" ECONOMICAL REFORM. 59 

There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will 
neither draw reverence nor obtain protection. If the noble lord 
in the blue riband pleads, Not guilty, to the charges brought 
against the present system of public economy, it is not possible 
to give a fair verdict by which he will not stand acquitted. But 
pleading is not our present business. His plea or his traverse 
may be allowed as an answer to a charge, when a charge is made. 
But if he puts himself in the way to obstruct reformation, then 
the faults of his office instantly become his own. Instead cf a 
public officer in an abusive department, whose province is an 
object to be regulated, he becomes a criminal who is to be 
punished. I do most seriously put it to administration to con- 
sider the wisdom of a timely reform. Early reformations are 
amicable arrangements with a friend in power ; late reforma- 
tions are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy : early refor- 
mations are made in cool blood ; late reformations are made 
under a state of inflammation. In that state of things the peo- 
ple behold in government nothing that is respectable. They see 
the abuse, and they will see nothing else. They fall into the 
temper of a furious populace provoked at the disorder of a 
house of ill-fame ; they never attempt to correct or regulate ; 
they go to work by the shortest way : they abate the nuisance, 
they pull down the house. 

This is my opinion with regard to the true interest of govern- 
ment. But as it is the interest of government that reformation 
should be early, it is the interest of the people that it should be 
temperate. It is their interest, because a temperate reform is 
permanent, and because it has a principle of growth. When- 
ever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further im- 
provement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine 
the effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with 
confidence, because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas 
in hot reformations, in what men more zealous than considerate 
call malting clear work, the whole is generally so crude, so harsh, 
so indigested, mixed with so much imprudence and so much 
injustice, so contrary to the whole course of human nature and 
human institutions, that the very people who are most eager 
for it are among the first to grow disgusted at what they have 
done. Then some part of the abdicated grievance is recalled 
from its exile in order to become a corrective of the correction. 
Then the abuse assumes all the credit and popularity of a 
reform. The very idea of purity and disinterestedness in 
politics falls into disrepute, and is considered as a vision of hot 
and inexperienced men ; and thus disorders become incurable, 
not by the virulence of their own quality, but by the unapt and 
violent nature of the remedies. A great part, therefore, of my 



60 



BURKE. 



idea of reform is meant to operate gradually : some benefits 
will come at a nearer, some at a more remote period. We must 
no more make haste to be rich by parsimony than by intemper- 
ate acquisition. 

In my opinion, it is our duty, when we have the desires of 
the people before us, to pursue them, not in the spirit of literal 
obedience, which may militate with their very principle, — much 
less to treat them with a peevish and contentious litigation, 
as if we were adverse parties in a suit. It would, Sir, be most 
dishonourable for a faithful representative of the Commons to 
take advantage of any inartificial expression of the people's 
wishes, in order to frustrate their attainment of what they 
have an undoubted right to expect. We are under infinite 
obligations to our constituents, who have raised us to so dis- 
tinguished a trust, and have imparted such a degree of sanctity 
to common characters. We ought to walk before them with 
purity, plainness, and integrity of heart, — with filial love, and 
not with slavish fear, which is always a low and tricking thing. 
For my own part, in what I have meditated upon that subject, 
I cannot, indeed, take upon me to say I have the honour to 
follow the sense of the people. The truth is, I met it on the way, 
while I was pursuing their interest according to my own ideas. 
I am happy beyond expression to find that my intentions have 
so far coincided with theirs, that I have not had cause to be in 
the least scrupulous to sign their petition, conceiving it to 
express my own opinions, as nearly as general terms can ex- 
press the object of particular arrangements. 

I am therefore satisfied to act as a fair mediator between 
government and the people, endeavouring to form a plan which 
should have both an early and a temperate operation. I mean, 
that it should be systematic, that it should rather strike at the 
first cause of prodigality and corrupt influence than attempt to 
follow them in all their effects. 

It was to fulfil the first of these objects (the proposal of some- 
thing substantial) that I found myself obliged, at the outset, to 
reject a plan proposed by an honourable and attentive member 
of Parliament, with very good intentions on his part, about a 
year or two ago. Sir, the plan I speak of was the tax of twenty- 
five per cent moved upon places and pensions during the con- 
tinuance of the American war. Nothing, Sir, could have met 
my ideas more than such a tax, if it was considered as a practi- 
cal satire on that war, and as a penalty upon those who led us 
into it ; but in any other view it appeared to me very liable to 
objections. I considered the scheme as neither substantial, 
nor permanent, nor systematical, nor likely to be a corrective 
of evil influence. I have always thought employments a very 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. 61 

proper subject of regulation, but a very ill-chosen subject for 
a tax. An equal tax upon property is reasonable ; because the 
object is of the same quality throughout. The species is the 
same ; it differs only in its quantity. But a tax upon salaries 
is totally of a different nature ; there can be no equality, and 
consequently no justice, in taxing them by the hundred in the 
gross. 

Wq have, Sir, on our establishment several offices which 
perform real service : we have also places that provide large 
rewards for no service at all. We have stations which are 
made for the public decorum, made for preserving the grace 
and majesty of a great people : we have likewise expensive 
formalities, which tend rather to the disgrace than the orna- 
ment of the State and the Court. This, Sir, is the real condi- 
tion of our establishments. To fall with the same severity on 
objects so perfectly dissimilar is the very reverse of a reforma- 
tion,— I mean a reformation framed, as all serious things ought 
to be, in number, weight, and measure.— Suppose, for instance, 
that two men receive a salary of £800 a-year each. In the office 
of one there is nothing at all to be done ; in the other, the 
occupier is oppressed by its duties. Strike off twenty-five per 
cent from these two offices, you take from one man £200 which 
in justice he ought to have, and you give in effect to the other 
£600 which he ought not to receive. The public robs the for- 
mer, and the latter robs the public ; and this mode of mutual 
robbery is the only way in which the office and the public can 
make up their accounts. 

But the balance, in settling the account of this double injus- 
tice, is much against the State. The result is short. You pur- 
chase a saving of two hundred pounds by a profusion of six. 
Besides, Sir, whilst you leave a supply of unsecured money 
behind, wholly at the discretion of Ministers, they make up the 
tax to such places as they wish to favour, or in such new places 
as they may choose to create. Thus the civil list becomes 
oppressed with debt ; and the public is obliged to repay, and to 
repay with an heavy interest, what it has taken by an injudi- 
cious tax. Such has been the effect of the taxes hitherto laid 
on pensions and employments, and it is no encouragement to 
recur again to the same expedient. 

In effect, such a scheme is not calculated to produce, but 
to prevent reformation. It holds out a shadow of present gain 
to a greedy and necessitous public, to divert their attention 
from those abuses which in reality are the great causes of 
their wants. It is a composition to stay inquiry ; it is a fine 
paid by mismanagement for the renewal of its lease ; what 
is worse, it is a fine paid by industry and merit for an in- 



62 BUBKE. 

demnity to the idle and the worthless. But I shall say no 
more upon this topic, because (whatever may be given out to 
the contrary) I know that the noble lord in the blue riband 
perfectly agrees with me in these sentiments. 

After all that I have said on this subject, I am so sensible 
that it is our duty to try every thing which may contribute to 
the relief of the nation, that I do not attempt wholly to repro- 
bate the idea even of a tax. Whenever, Sir, the incumbrance 
of useless office (which lies no less a dead weight upon the 
service of the State than upon its revenues) shall be removed, 
— when the remaining offices shall be classed according to the 
just proportion of their rewards and services, so as to admit 
the application of an equal rule to their taxation, — when the 
discretionary power over the civil-list cash shall be so regulated 
that a minister shall no longer have the means of repaying with 
a private what is taken by a public hand, — if, after all these 
preliminary regulations, it should be thought that a tax on 
places is an object worthy of the public attention, I shall be 
very ready to lend my hand to a reduction of their emoluments. 

Having thus, Sir, not so much absolutely rejected as post- 
poned the plan of a taxation of office, my next business was to 
find something which might be really substantial and effectual. 
I am quite clear that, if we do not go to the very origin and first 
ruling cause of grievances, we do nothing. What does it signify 
to turn abuses out of one door, if we are to let them in at an- 
other? What does it signify to promote economy upon a meas- 
ure, and to suffer it to be subverted in the principle? Our 
Ministers are far from being wholly to blame for the present ill 
order which prevails. Whilst institutions directly repugnant to 
good management are suffered to remain, no effectual or lasting 
reform can be introduced. 

I therefore thought it necessary, as soon as I conceived 
thoughts of submitting to you some plan of reform, to take a 
comprehensive view of the state of this country, — to make a 
sort of survey of its jurisdictions, its estates, and its establish- 
ments. Something in every one of them seemed to me to stand 
in the way of all economy in their administration, and prevent- 
ed every possibility of methodizing the system. But being, as 
I ought to be, doubtful of myself, I was resolved not to proceed 
in an arbitrary manner in any particular which tended to change 
the settled state of things, or in any degree to affect the fortune 
or situation, the interest or the importance, of any individual. 
By an arbitrary proceeding I mean one conducted by the pri- 
vate opinions, tastes, or feelings of the man who attempts to 
regulate. These private measures are not standards of the ex- 
chequer, nor balances of the sanctuary. General principles 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 63 

cannot be debauched or corrupted by interest or caprice ; and 
by those principles I was resolved to work. 

Sir, before I proceed further, I will lay these principles fairly 
before you, that afterwards you may be in a condition to judge 
whether every object of regulation, as I propose it, conies fairly 
under its rule. This will exceedingly shorten all discussion be- 
tween us, if we are perfectly in earnest in establishing a system 
of good management. I therefore lay down to myself seven 
fundamental rules: they might, indeed, be reduced to two or 
three simple maxims ; but they would be too general, and their 
application to the several heads of the business before us would 
not be so distinct and visible. I conceive, then, 

First, That all jurisdictions which furnish more matter of ex- 
pense, more temptation to oppression, or more means and 
instruments of corrupt influence, than advantage to justice or 
political administration, ought to be abolished. 

Secondly, That all public estates which are more subservient 
to the purposes of vexing, overawing, and influencing those 
who hold under them, and to the expense of perception 5 and 
management, than of benefit to the revenue, ought, upon 
every principle both of revenue and of freedom, to 'be dis- 
posed of. 

Thirdly, That all offices which bring more charge than pro- 
portional advantage to the State, that all offices which may be 
engrafted on others, uniting and simplifying their duties, ought, 
in the first case, to be taken away, and, in the second, to be 
consolidated. 

Fourthly, That all such offices ought to be abolished as ob- 
struct the prospect of the general superintendent of finance, 
which destroy his superintendency, which disable him from 
foreseeing and providing for charges as they may occur, from 
preventing expense in its origin, checking it in its progress, or 
securing its application to its proper purposes. A minister un- 
der whom expenses can be made without his knowledge, can 
never say what it is that he can spend, or what it is that he can 
save. 

Fifthly, That it is proper to establish an invariable order in 
all payments, which will prevent partiality which will give pref- 
erence to services, not according to the importunity of the de- 
mandant, but the rank and order of their utility or their justice. 

Sixthly, That it is right to reduce every establishment and 
every part of an establishment (as nearly as possible) to cer- 
tainty, the life of all order and good management. 

Seventhly, That all subordinate treasuries, as the nurseries of 

5 Perception is here used in its Latin sense of gathering or collecting. 



6.4 BURKE. 

mismanagement, and as naturally drawing to themselves as 
much money as they can, keeping it as long as they can, and 
accounting for it as late as they can, ought to be dissolved. 
They have a tendency to perplex and distract the public ac- 
counts, and to excite a suspicion of government even beyond 
the extent of their abuse. 

Under the authority and with the guidance of these princi- 
ples I proceed, —wishing that nothing in any establishment 
may be changed, where I am not able to make a strong, direct, 
and solid application of these principles, or of some one of 
them. An economical constitution is a necessary basis for an 
economical administration. 

First, with regard to the sovereign jurisdictions, I must ob- 
serve, Sir, that whoever takes a view of this kingdom in a cur- 
sory manner will imagine that he beholds a solid, compacted, 
uniform system of monarchy, in which all inferior jurisdictions 
are but as rays diverging from one centre. But, on examining 
it more nearly, you find much eccentricity and confusion. It is 
not a monarchy in strictness. But, as in the Saxon times this 
country was an heptarchy, it is now a strange sort of penlarchy. 
It is divided into five several distinct principalities, besides the 
supreme. There is, indeed, this difference from the Saxon 
times, — that, as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for 
want of a complete company, they are obliged to throw a vari- 
ety of parts on their chief performer, so our sovereign conde- 
scends himself to act not only the principal, but all the subor- 
dinate parts in the play. He condescends to dissipate the royal 
character, and to trifle with those light, subordinate, lacquered 3 
sceptres in those hands that sustain the ball representing the 
world, or which wield the trident that commands the ocean. 
Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England ; but you have 
some comfort in coming again under his Majesty, though 
"shorn of his beams," and no more than Prince of Wales. Go 
to the north, and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancas- 
ter ; turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in 
the humble character of Earl of Chester. Travel a few miles 
on, the Earl of Chester disappears, and the King surprises you 
again as Count Palatine of Lancaster. If you travel beyond 
Mount Edgecombe, you find him once more in his incognito, 
^md he is Luke of Cornwall. So that, quite fatigued and sati- 
ated with this dull variety, you are infinitely refreshed when 
you return to the sphere of his proper splendour, and behold 
your amiable sovereign in his true, simple, undisguised, native 
character of Majesty. 

6 That is, varnished; lacquer being a sort of yellowish varnish. ; 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 65 

In every one of these five principalities, duchies, palatinates, 
there is a regular establishment of considerable expense and 
most domineering influence. As his Majesty submits to appear 
in this state of subordination to himself, his loyal peers and 
faithful commons attend his royal transformations, and are not 
so nice as to refuse to nibble at those crumbs of emoluments 
which console their petty metamorphoses. Thus every one of 
those principalities has the apparatus of a kingdom for the juris- 
diction over a few private estates, and the formality and charge 
of the Exchequer of Great Britain for collecting the rents of a 
country squire. Cornwall is the best of them ; but when you 
compare the charge with the receipt, you will find that it fur- 
nishes no exception to the general rule. The Duchy and 
County Palatine of Lancaster do not yield, as I have reason to 
believe, on an average of twenty years, four thousand pounds 
a-year clear to the crown. As to Wales, and the County Pala- 
tine of Chester, I have my doubts whether their productive 
exchequer yields any returns at all. Yet one may say, that 
this revenue is more faithfully applied to its purposes than any 
of the rest ; as it exists for the sole purpose of multiplying 
offices and extending influence. 

An attempt was lately made to improve this branch of local 
influence, and to transfer it to the fund of general corruption. 
I have on the seat behind me the constitution of Mr. John Pro- 
bert, a knight-errant clubbed by the noble lord in the blue 
riband, and sent to search for revenues and adventures upon 
the mountains of Wales. The commission is remarkable, and 
the event not less so. The commission sets forth that, "upon 
a report of the deputy-auditor" (for there is a deputy-auditor) 
"of the Principality of Wales, it appeared that his Majesty's 
land revenues in the said principality are greatly diminished"; — 
and "that, upon a report of the surveyor-general of his Majesty's 
land revenues, upon a memorial of the auditor of his Majesty's 
revenues, within the said principality, his mines and forests 
have produced very little profit either to the public revenue or to 
individuals;" — and therefore they appoint Mr. Probert, with a 
pension of three hundred pounds a-year from the said princi- 
pality, to try whether he can make any thing more of that very 
little which is stated to be so greatly diminished. "A beggarly 
account cf empty boxes!" And yet, Sir, you will remark, that 
this diminution from littleness (which serves only to prove the 
infinite divisibility of matter) was not for want of the tender 
and officious care (as we see) of surveyors-general and surveyors- 
particular, of auditors and deputy-auditors, — not for want of 
memorials, and remonstrances, and reports, and commissions, 
and constitutions, and inquisitions, and pensions. 



6Q 



BUHKE. 



Probert, thus armed, and accoutred,— and paid, — proceeded 
on his adventure ; but lie was no sooner arrived on the confines 
of Wales than all Wales was in arms to meet him. That nation 
is brave and full of spirit. Since the invasion of King Edward, 
and the massacre of the bards, there never was such a tumult 
and alarm and uproar through the region of Prestatyn. Snow- 
don shook to its base ; Cader-Idris was loosened from its foun- 
dations. The fury of litigious war blew her horn on the moun- 
tains. The rocks poured down their goatherds, and the deep 
caverns vomited out their miners. Every thing above ground 
and every thing under ground was in arms. 

In short, Sir, to alight from my Welsh Pegasus, and to come 
to level ground, the Preux Chevalier Probert went to look for 
revenue, like his masters upon other occasions, and, like his 
masters, he found rebellion. But we were grown cautious by 
experience. A civil war of paper might end in a more serious 
war ; for now remonstrance met remonstrance, and memorial 
was opposed to memorial. The wise Britons thought it more 
reasonable that the poor, wasted, decrepit revenue of the 
principality should die a natural than a violent death. In 
truth, Sir, the attempt was no less an affront upon the under- 
standing of that respectable people than it was an attack on 
their property. They chose rather that their ancient, moss- 
grown castles should moulder into decay, under the silent 
touches of time, and the slow formality of an oblivious and 
drowsy exchequer, than that they should be battered down all 
at once by the lively efforts of a pensioned engineer. As it is 
the fortune of the noble lord to whom the auspices of this 
campaign belonged frequently to provoke resistance, so it is his 
rule and nature to yield to that resistance on all cases ichat- 
soever. He was true to himself on this occasion. lie submitted 
with spirit to the spirited remonstrances of the Welsh. Mr. 
Probert gave up his adventure, and keeps his pension ; and so 
ends the famous history of the revenue adventures of the bold 
Baron North and the good Knight Probert upon the mountains 
of Venoclotia. 

In such a state is the exchequer of Wales at present, that, 
upon the report of the Treasury itself, its little revenue is 
greatly diminished ; and we see, by the whole of this strange 
transaction, that an attempt to improve it produces resistance, 
the resistance produces submission, and the whole ends in 
pension. 7 



7 Here Lord North shook his head, and told those who sat near him that Mr. 
Troberfs pension Avas to depend on his success. It may be so. Mr. Probert's 
pension was, however, no essential part of the question; nor did Mr, Burke care 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 67 

It is nearly the same with the revenues of the Duchy of 
Lancaster. To do nothing with them is extinction ; to improve 
them is oppression. Indeed, the whole of the estates which 
support these minor principalities is made up, not of revenues 
and rents and profitable fines, but of claims, of pretensions, of 
vexations, of litigations. They are exchequers of unfrequent 
receipt and constant charge ; a system of finances not fit for an 
economist who would be rich, not fit for a prince who would 
govern his subjects with equity and justice. 

It is not only between prince and subject that these mock 
jurisdictions and mimic revenues produce great mischief. They 
excite among the people a spirit of informing and delating, a 
spirit of supplanting and undermining one another : so that 
many, in such circumstances, conceive it advantageous to them 
rather to continue subject to vexation themselves than to give 
up the means and chance of vexing others. It is exceedingly 
common for men to contract their love to their country into an 
attachment to its petty subdivisions ; and they sometimes even 
cling to their provincial abuses, as if they were franchises and 
local privileges. Accordingly, in places where there is much 
of this kind of estate, persons will be always found who would 
rather trust to their talents in recommending themselves to 
power for the renewal of their interests, than to encumber 
their purses, though never so lightly, in order to transmit 
independence to their posterity. It is a great mistake, that the 
desire of securing property is universal among mankind. Gam- 
ing is a principle inherent in human nature. It belongs to us 
all. I would therefore break those tables ; I would furnish no 
evil occupation for that spirit. I would make every man look 
everywhere, except to the intrigue of a Court, for the improve- 
ment of his circumstances or the security of his fortune. I 
have in my eye a very strong case in the Duchy of Lancaster 
(which lately occupied Westminster Hall and the House of 
Lords) as my voucher for many of these reflections. 

For what plausible reason are these principalities suffered to 
exist? When a government is rendered complex, (which in 
itself is no desirable thing,) it ought to be for some political end 
which cannot be answered otherwise. Subdivisions in govern- 
ment are only admissible in favour of the dignity of inferior 
princes and high nobility, or for the support of an aristocratic 
confederacy under some head, or for the conservation of the 
franchises of the people in some privileged province. Tor the 

whether he still possessed it or not. His point was, to show the ridicule of 
attempting an improvement of the Welsh revenue under its present establish- 
ment.— Author's Note. 



08 



BURKE. 



two former of these ends, such are the subdivisions in favour of 
the electoral and other princes in the Empire ; for the latter 
of these purposes are the jurisdictions of the Imperial cities 
and the Hanse towns. For the latter of these ends are also the 
countries of the States (Pays d' Etats) and certain cities and. 
orders in France. These are all regulations with an object, 
and some of them with a very good object. But how are the 
principles of any of these subdivisions applicable in the case 
before us ? 

Do they answer any purpose to the King ? The Principality 
of Wales was given by patent to Edward the Black Prince on 
the ground on which it has since stood. Lord Coke sagaciously 
observes upon it, "That in the charter of creating the Black 
Prince Edward Prince of Wales there is a great mystery: for 
less than an estate of inheritance so great a prince could not 
have, and an absolute estate of inheritance in so great a principality 
as Wales (this principality being so dear to him) he shoidd not 
have ; and therefore it was made sibi et heredibus suis regibus 
Anglice, 8 that by his decease, or attaining to the crown, it might 
be extinguished in the crown." 

For the sake of this foolish mystery, of what a great prince 
could not have less, and should not have so much, of a princi- 
pality which was too dear to be given, and too great to be kept, 
— and for no other cause that ever I could find, — this form and 
shadow of a principality, without any substance, has been 
maintained. That you may judge in this instance (and it serves 
for the rest) of the difference between a great and a little econ- 
omy, you will please to recollect, Sir, that Wales may be about 
the tenth part of England in size and population, and certainly 
not a hundredth part in opulence. Twelve judges perform the 
whole of the business, both of the stationary and the itinerant 
justice of this kingdom ; but for Wales there are eight judges. 
There is in Wales an exchequer, as well as in all the duchies, 
according to the very best and most authentic absurdity of 
form. There are in all of them a hundred more difficult trifles 
and laborious fooleries, which serve no other purpose than to 
keep alive corrupt hope and servile dependence. 

These principalities are so far from contributing to the ease 
of the King, to his wealth or his dignity, that they render both 
his supreme and his subordinate authority perfectly ridiculous. 
It was but the other day, that that pert, factious fellow, the 
Duke of Lancaster, presumed to fly in the face of his liege 
lord, our gracious sovereign, and, associating with a parcel of 
lawyers as factious as himself, to the destruction of all law and 



8 That is, " to himself and his heirs as Kiugs of England." 



SPEECH Otf ECONOMICAL REFORM. 69 

order, and in committees leading directly to rebellion, presumed to 
go to law with the King. The object is neither your business 
nor mine. Which of the parties got the better I really forget. 
I think it was (as it ought to be) the King. The material point 
is, that the suit cost about fifteen thousand pounds; But, as 
the Duke of Lancaster is but a sort of Duke Humphrey? and 
not worth a groat, our sovereign was obliged to pay the costs of 
both. Indeed, this art of converting a great monarch into a 
little prince, this royal masquerading, is a very dangerous and 
expensive amusement, and one of the King's menus plaisirs, 1 
which ought to be reformed. This duchy, which is not worth 
four thousand pounds a-year at best to revenue, is worth forty 
or fifty thousand to influence. 

The Duchy of Lancaster and the County Palatine of Lancas- 
ter answered, I admit, some purpose in their original creation. 
They tended to make a subject imitate a prince. When Henry 
the Fourth from that stair ascended the throne, high-minded 
as he was, he was not willing to kick away the ladder. To 
prevent that principality from being extinguished in the crown, 
he severed it by Act of Parliament. He had a motive, such as 
it was : he thought his title to the crown unsound, and his 
possession insecure. 2 He therefore managed a retreat in his 
duchy, which Lord Coke calls (I do not know why) "par multis 
regnis." 3 He flattered himself that it was practicable to make 
a projecting point half way down, to break his fall from the 
precipice of royalty ; as if it were possible for one who had lost 

9 Duke Humphrey appears to be an old cant term for a high-titled nonentity; 
and Dining with Duke Humphrey was long a common phrase, used of one so 
naked of cash, that he had to make his dinner on air. Nares accounts for it as 
follows : " Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, though really buried at St. Alban's, 
was supposed to have a monument in old St. Paul's, from which one part of the 
church was termed Dulce Humphrey's Walk. In this, as the church was then a 
place of the most public resort, they who had no means of procuring a dinner 
frequently loitered about, probably in hopes of meeting with an invitation, but 
under pretence of looking at the monuments." 

1 One of the King's little pleasures. 

2 Henry the Fourth, known in history as Bolingbroke, so called from the 
place of his birth, held the crown, not by succession, but by usurpation, he hav- 
ing violently seized it from his cousin, Richard the Second. His father, John, 
Duke of Lancaster, was the third son of Edward the Third; and, on the failure 
or exclusion of Richard, the crown, according to the strict rule of succession, 
should have devolved to the heirs of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second son 
of Edward the Third. These, heirs were then mere children, and their family 
name was Mortimer, the only child left by Lionel being a daughter. As Henry 
knew his tenure of the crown to be a usurpation, he was naturally distrustful 
of his title, and so was the more tenacious of the dukedom of Lancaster, which 
was his by inheritance. 

3 That is, equal or equivalent to many kingdoms. As Burke did not know 
the reason of Lord Coke's language, I do not blush to own the same ignorance. . 



70 BURKE. 

a kingdom to keep any thing else. However, it is evident that 
he thought so. When Henry the Fifth united, by Act of 
Parliament, the estates of his mother to the duchy, he had the 
same predilection with his father to the root of his family 
honours, and the same policy in enlarging the sphere of a possi- 
ble retreat from the slippery royalty of the two great crowns he 
held. 4 All this was changed by Edward the Fourth. He had 
no such family partialities, and his policy was the reverse of 
that of Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth. He accord- 
ingly again united the Duchy of Lancaster to the crown. But 
when Henry the Seventh, who chose to consider himself as of 
the House of Lancaster, came to the throne, he brought with 
him the old pretensions and the old politics of that House. 5 A 
new Act of Parliament, a second time, dissevered the Duchy 
of Lancaster from the crown ; and in that line things continued 
until the subversion of the monarchy, when principalities and 
powers fell along with the throne. The Duchy of Lancaster 
must have been extinguished, if Cromwell, who began to 
form ideas of aggrandizing his House and raising the several 
branches of it, had not caused the duchy to be again separated 
from the commonwealth, by an Act of the Parliament of those 
times. 

What partiality, what objects of the politics of the House of 
Lancaster, or of Cromwell, has his present Majesty, or his 
Majesty's family? What power have they within any of these 
principalities, which they have not within their kingdom ? In 
what manner is the dignity of the nobility concerned in these 
principalities ? What rights have the subject there, which they 
have not at least equally in every other part of the nation? 
These distinctions exist for no good end to the King, to the no- 
bility, or to the people. They ought not to exist at all. If the 
Crown (contrary to its nature, but most conformably to the 
whole tenour of the advice that has been lately given) should 
so far forget its dignity as to contend that these jurisdictions 
and revenues are estates of private property, I am rather for 

4 The two great crowns held by Henry the Fifth were those of England and 
France, he having won the latter by conquest. — Edward the Fourth Avas de- 
scended from Edmund,- Duke of York, the fourth son of Edward the Third. 
But his grandfather had married the heir of Lionel, and so his father claimed 
the crown in right of his mother. 

5 John, the Duke of Lancaster mentioned in note 2 above, had two families 
of children, one by his lawful wife, the other by Catharine Swynford. The lat- 
ter took the name of Beaufort, from the place of their birth, which was Beaufort 
Castle, in France. After the death of his first wife, John married the mother of 
these children, and the children were legitimated by Act of Parliament. A 
daughter of the Beaufort branch was married to Owen Tudor, and hence be- 
came the mother of Henry the Seventh. 



SPEECH OX ECONOMICAL REFORM. 71 

acting as if that groundless claim were of some weight than for 
giving up that essential part of the reform. I would value the 
clear income, and give a clear annuity to the Crown, taken on 
the medium produce for twenty years. 

If the Crown has any favourite name or title, if the subject 
has any matter of local accommodation within any of these 
jurisdictions, it is meant to preserve them, — and to improve 
them, if any improvement can be suggested. As to the Crown 
reversions or titles upon the property of the people there, it is 
proposed to convert them from a snare to their independence 
into a relief from their burdens. I propose, therefore, to unite 
all the five principalities to the Crown, and to its ordinary ju- 
risdiction, — to abolish all those offices that produce an useless 
and chargeable separation from the body of the people, — to 
compensate those who do not hold their offices (if any such 
there are) at the pleasure of the Crown, — to extinguish vexa- 
tious titles by an Act of short limitation, 6 — to sell those unprof- 
itable estates which support useless jurisdictions, — and to turn 
the tenant-right into a fee, 7 on such moderate terms as will be 
better for the State than its present right, and which it is im- 
possible for any rational tenant to refuse. 

As to the duchies, their judicial economy may be provided 
for without charge. They have only to fall of course into the 
common county administration. A commission more or less, 
made or omitted, settles the matter ftflly. As to Wales, it has 
been proposed to add a judge to the several courts of Westmin- 
ster Hall ; and it has been considered as an improvement in 
itself. For my part, I cannot pretend to speak upon it with 
clearness or with decision ; but certainly this arrangement 
would be more than sufficient for Wales. My original thought 
was, to suppress five of the eight judges ; and to leave the 
chief-justice of Chester, with the two senior judges ; and, to 
facilitate the business, to throw the twelve counties into six 
districts, holding the sessions alternately in the counties of 
which each district shall be composed. But on this I shall be 
more clear when I come to the particular bill. 

Sir, the House will now see, whether, in praying for judgment 
against the minor principalities, I do not act in conformity to 
the laws that I had laid to myself ; of getting rid of every juris- 

6 An Act of limitation is a statute limiting a given claim or tenure to a cer- 
tain specified time ; so that it shall cease, say, at the end of twenty years, or on 
the death of the present occupant. 

7 Tenure in fee, or tenure in fee-simple, is the strongest tenure known to Eng- 
lish law : it involves an entire and exclusive right to the thing held. A tenant- 
right differs from this in being a sort of lease-hold, as a tenure for life or for a 
given term of years. 



72 BUKKE. 

diction more subservient to oppression and expense than to any 
end of justice or honest policy ; of abolishing offices more ex- 
pensive than useful ; of combining duties improperly separated ; 
of changing revenues more vexatious than productive into 
ready money ; of suppressing offices which stand in the way of 
economy ; and of cutting oft lurking subordinate treasuries. 
Dispute the rules, controvert the application, or give your 
hands to this salutary measure. 

Most of the same rules will be found applicable to my second 
object, — the landed estate of the Crown. A landed estate is cer- 
tainly the very worst which the Crown can possess. All minute 
and dispersed possessions, possessions that are often of indeter- 
minate value, and which require a continued personal attend- 
ance, are of a nature more proper for private management than 
public administration. They are fitter for the care of a frugal 
land-steward than of an office in the State. "Whatever they 
may possibly have been in other times or in other countries, 
they are not of magnitude enough with us to occupy a public 
department, nor to provide for a public object. They are 
already given up to Parliament, and the gift is not of great 
value. Common prudence dictates, even in the management of 
private affairs, that all dispersed and chargeable estates should 
be sacrificed to the relief of estates more compact and better 
circumstanced. 

If it be objected that these lands at present would sell at a 
low market, this is answered by showing that money is at a 
high price. The one balances the other. Lands sell at the 
current rate ; and nothing can sell for more. But, be the price 
what it may, a great object is always answered, whenever any 
property is transferred from hands that are not fit for that 
property to those that are. The buyer and seller must mutu- 
ally profit by such a bargain ; and, what rarely happens in mat- 
ters of revenue, the relief of the subject will go hand in hand 
with the profit of the Exchequer. 

As to the forest lands, in which the Crown has (where they are 
not granted or prescriptively held) the dominion of the soil, and 
the vert* and venison, that is to say, the timber and the game, 
and in which the people have a variety of rights in common, of 
herbage, and other commons, according to the usage of the 
several forests, — I propose to have those rights of the Crown 
valued as manorial rights 9 are valued on an inclosure, and a 

8 Vert is from the Latin virere, to be green. In English Forest Law, it in- 
eludes every thing that grows and bears a green leaf within the forest. 

9 Manorial rights are rights vested in a lord or lady of a manor; that is, the ' 
right which such lord or lady has to a certain specified share of the produce, or 
to certain stipulated services, from the occupant of an estate, whose tenure 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. 73 

defined portion of land to be given for them, which land is to 
be sold for the public benefit. 

As to the timber, I propose a survey of the whole. What is 
useless for the naval purposes of the kingdom I would condemn 
and dispose of for the security of what may be useful, and 
inclose such other parts as may be most fit to furnish a perpet- 
ual supply, —wholly extinguishing, for a very obvious reason, 
all right of venison in those parts. 

The forest rights which extend over the lands and possessions 
of others, being of no profit to the Crown, and a grievance, as 
far as it goes, to the subject, — these I propose to extinguish 
without charge to the proprietors. The several commons 1 are 
to be allotted and compensated for, upon ideas which I shall 
hereafter explain. They are nearly the same with the princi- 
ples upon which you have acted in private inclosures. I shall 
never quit precedents, where I find them applicable. For those 
regulations and compensations, and for every other part of the 
detail, you will be so indulgent as to give me credit for the 
present. 

The revenue to be obtained from the sale of the forest lands 
and rights will not be so considerable, I believe, as many people 
have imagined ; and I conceive it would be unwise to screw it 
up to the utmost, or even to suffer bidders to enhance, accord- 
ing to their eagerness, the purchase of objects wherein the 
expense of that purchase may weaken the capital to be em- 
ployed in their cultivation. This, I am well aware, might give 
room for partiality in the disposal. In my opinion it would be 
the lesser evil of the two. But I really conceive that a rule of 
fair preference might be established, which would take away 
all sort of unjust and corrupt partiality. The principal revenue 
which I propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes is to 
spring from the improvement and population of the kingdom, — 
which never can happen without producing an improvement 
more advantageous to the revenues of the Crown than the rents 
of the best landed estate which it can hold. I believe, Sir, it 
will hardly be necessary for me to add that in this sale I natu- 
rally except all the houses, gardens, and parks belonging to the 
Crown, and such one forest as shall be chosen by his Majesty 
as best accommodated to his pleasures. 

By means of this part of the reform will fall the expensive 

is otherwise entire and absolute. So in cases of lands held in fee-simple by 
the tenants, but subject to perpetual rent. 

1 Commons, as the word is here used, are pieces of land enjoyed in common 
by the people of a given neighbourhood; and the meaning is, that the rights of 
such people shall be bought out, and the lands allotted to individuals in exclu- 
sive possession. ._ . . ...... 



74 BUKKE. 

office of surveyor-general, with all the influence that attends it. 
By this will fall two chief -justices in Eyre, 2 with all their train of 
dependants. You need be under no apprehension, Sir, that 
your office is to be touched in its emoluments. They are yours 
by law ; and they are but a moderate part of the compensation 
which is given to you for the ability with which you execute an 
office of quite another sort of importance: it is far from over- 
paying your diligence, or more than sufficient for sustaining the 
high rank you stand in as the first gentleman of England. 3 As 
to the duties of your chief-justiceship, they are very different 
from those for which you have received the office. Your 
dignity is too high for a jurisdiction over wild beasts, and your 
learning and talents too valuable to be wasted as chief-justice 
of a desert. I cannot reconcile it to myself, that you, Sir, 
should be stuck up as a useless piece of antiquity. 

I have now disposed of the unprofitable landed estates of the 
Crown, and thrown them into the mass of private property ; by 
which they will come, through the course of circulation, and 
through the political secretions of the State, into our better- 
understood and better-ordered revenues. 

1 come next to the great supreme body of the civil govern- 
ment itself. I approach it with that awe and reverence with 
which a young physician approaches to the cure of the disor- 
ders of his parent. Disorders, Sir, and infirmities, there are, 

— such disorders, that all attempts towards method, prudence, 
and frugality will be perfectly vain, whilst a system of confu- 
sion remains, which is not only alien, but adverse to all econ- 
omy ; a system which is not only prodigal in its very essence, 
but causes every thing else which belongs to it to be prodi- 
gally conducted. 

It is impossible, Sir, for any person to be an economist, where 
no order in payments is established ; it is impossible for a man 
to be an economist, who is not able to take a comparative view 
of his means and of his expenses for the year which lies before 
him ; it is impossible for a man to be an economist, under 
whom various officers in their -several departments may spend 

— even just what they please, — and often with an emulation of 
expense, as contributing to the importance, if not profit, of their 
several departments. Thus much is certain,— that neither the 

2 Eyre is from the old French erre, journey, or march. A justice in Eyre is, 
properly, an itinerant judge; that is, one who travels a circuit, to hold courts in 
different counties. What follows infers that the Speaker of the House of Com- 
mons is, ex officio, a chief-justice in Eyre, and that he has certain emoluments or 
perquisites as such, though the office is in his case merely nominal. 

3 By a traditionary opinion or maxim, the Speaker of the House of Commons 
is, ipso facto, " the first gentleman of England." 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. «0 

present nor any other First Lord of the Treasury has ever been 
able to take a survey, or to make even a tolerable guess, of the 
expenses of government for any one year, so as to enable him 
with the least degree of certainty, or even probability, to bring 
his affairs within compass. Whatever scheme may be formed 
upon them must be made on a. calculation of chances. As things 
are circumstanced, the First Lord of the Treasury cannot make 
an estimate. I am sure I serve the King, and I am sure I assist 
administration, by putting economy at least in their power. 
"We must admit class services; we must (as far as their nature 
admits) appropriate funds ; or every thing, however reformed, 
will fall again into the old confusion. 

Coming upon this ground of the civil list, 4 the first thing in 
dignity and charge that attracts our notice is the royal house- 
hold. This establishment, in my opinion, is exceedingly abus- 
ive in its constitution. It is formed upon manners and customs 
that have long since expired. In the first place, it is formed, 
in many respects, upon feudal principles. In the feudal times 
it was not uncommon, even among subjects, for the lowest 
offices to be held by considerable persons,— persons as unfit by 
their incapacity as improper from their rank to occupy such 
employments. They were held by patent, sometimes for life, 
and sometimes by inheritance. If my memory does not deceive 
me, a person of no slight consideration held the office of patent 
hereditary cook to an Earl of "Warwick : the Earl of Warwick's 
soups, I fear, were not the better for the dignity of his kitchen. 
I think it was an Earl of Gloucester who officiated as steward of 
the household to the Archbishops of Canterbury. Instances of 
the same kind may in some degree be found in the JSTorthum- 

4 The phrase civil list occurs frequently in this speech. It means the office- 
holders of the civil service as distinguished from those of the military and na- 
val. The custom of Parliament at that time was not to make specific appropri- 
ations for the several parts and persons of this service, strictly limiting the ex- 
penses to the sums appropriated, but to vote a sum in the gross, leaving it to be 
used in payment of salaries, pensions, &c, at the discretion of Ministers or of the 
Court. The result was, that the sums thus voted were constantly exceeded, the 
excess accumulated, and every few years large extra sums were required for 
payment of what were called the King's debts. Of course the officers and ser- 
vants of the King's household were included in the civil list; but this part of the 
service was then a huge, multitudinous sinecurism, the cost of which was nei- 
ther more nor less than a vast fund of corruption under the name of influence. 
As members of Parliament get no pay from government on that score, there 
were plenty of small local constituencies who were glad to have their members 
paid from whatever source. And so a large number of men, or things, nomi- 
nally holding places in the royal household, and drawing fat salaries as such, 
were, by various arts, and through what were called pocket boroughs, put into 
the House of Commons, where they were always to vote just as the King or his 
favourites wished. 



76 BUHKE. 

berland house-book, and other family records. There was 
some reason in ancient necessities for these ancient customs. 
Protection was wanted ; and the domestic tie, though not the 
highest, was the closest. 

The King's household has not only several strong traces of 
this feudality, but it is formed also upon the principles of a body 
corporate : it has its own magistrates, courts, and by-laws. 
This might be necessary in the ancient times, in order to have 
a government within itself, capable of regulating the vast and 
often unruly multitude which composed and attended it. This 
was the origin of the ancient court called the Green Cloth,— 
composed of the marshal, treasurer, and other great officers of 
the household, with certain clerks. The rich subjects of the 
kingdom, who had formerly the same establishments, (only on 
a reduced scale,) have since altered their economy, and turned 
the course of their expense from the maintenance of vast 
establishments within their walls to the employment of a great 
variety of independent trades abroad. Their influence is less- 
ened ; but a mode of accommodation and a style of splendour 
suited to the manners of the times has been increased. Roy- 
alty itself has insensibly followed, and the royal household has 
been carried away by the resistless tide of manners, but with 
this very material difference, — private men have got rid of the 
establishments along with the reasons of them ; whereas the 
royal household has lost all that was stately and venerable in 
the antique manners, without retrenching any thing of the 
cumbrous charge of a Gothic establishment. It is shrunk into 
the polished littleness of modern elegance and personal accom- 
modation ; it has evaporated from the gross concrete into an 
essence and rectified spirit of expense, where you have tuns of 
ancient pomp in a vial of modern luxury. 

But when the reason of old establishments is gone, it is ab- 
surd to preserve nothing but the burden of "them. This is 
superstitiously to embalm a carcass not worth an ounce of the 
gums that are used to preserve it. It is to burn precious oils in 
the tomb; it is to offer meat and drink to the dead, — not so 
much an honour to the deceased as a disgrace to the survivors. 
Our palaces are vast inhospitable halls. There the bleak winds, 
there "Boreas, and Eurus, and Caurus, and Argestes loud," 
howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the doors of 
deserted guard-rooms, appal the imagination, and conjure up 
the grim spectres of departed tyrants, — the Saxon, the Norman, 
and the Dane, — the stern Edwards and fierce Henrys, — who 
stalk from desolation to desolation, through the dreary vacuity 
and melancholy succession of chill and comfortless chambers. 
"When this tumult subsides, a dead and still more frightful 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. 



77 



silence would reign in this desert, if every now and then the 
tacking of hammers did not announce that those constant at- 
tendants upon all Courts in all ages, jobs, were still alive, — for 
whose sake alone it is that any trace of ancient grandeur is suf- 
fered to remain. These palaces are a true emblem of some gov- 
ernments : the inhabitants are decayed, but the governors and 
magistrates still flourish. They put me in mind of Old Sarum, 5 
where the representatives, more in number than the constitu- 
ents, only serve to inform us that this was once a place of trade, 
and sounding with ''the busy hum of men," though now you 
can only trace the streets by the colour of the corn, and its sole 
manufacture is in members of Parliament. 

These old establishments were formed also on a third princi- 
ple, still more adverse to the living economy of the age. They 
were formed, Sir, on the principle of purveyance and receipt in 
kind. In former days, when the household was vast, and the 
supply scanty and precarious, the royal purveyors, sallying 
forth from under the Gothic portcullis to purchase provision 
with power and prerogative instead of money, brought home 
the plunder of an hundred markets, and all that could be seized 
from a flying and hiding country, and deposited their spoil in 
an hundred caverns, with each its keeper. There, every com- 
modity, received in its rawest condition, went through all the 
processes which fitted it for use. This inconvenient receipt pro- 
duced an economy suited only to itself. It multiplied offices 
beyond all measure, — buttery, pantry, and all that rabble of 
places, which, though profitable to the holders, and expensive 
to the State, are almost too mean to mention. 

All this might be, and I believe was, necessary at first ; for it 
is remarkable, that purveyance, after its regulation had been the 
subject of a long line of statutes, (not fewer, I think, than 
twenty-six,) was wholly taken away by the 12th of Charles the 
Second ; yet in the next year of the same reign it was found 
necessary to revive it by a special Act of Parliament, for the 
sake of the King's journeys. This, Sir, is curious, and what 
would hardly be expected in so reduced a Court as that of 
Charles the Second, and in so improved a country as England 
might then be thought. But so it was. In our time, one well- 
filled and well-covered stage-coach requires more accommoda- 
tion than a royal progress, and every district, at an hour's 
warning, can sui3ply an army. 

I do not say, Sir, that all these establishments, whose princi- 
ple is gone, have been systematically kept up for influence 
solely: neglect had its share. But this I am sure of,— that a 



5 Sarum is an ancient contraction, or corruption, of Salisbury. 



78 BURKE. 

consideration of influence has hindered any one from attempt- 
ing to pull them down. For the purposes of influence, and for 
those purposes only, are retained half at least of the household 
establishments. No revenue, no, not a royal revenue, can exist 
under the accumulated charge of ancient establishment, mod- 
ern luxury, and Parliamentary political corruption. 

If, therefore, we aim at regulating this household, the ques- 
tion will be, whether we ought to economize by detail or by 
principle. The example we have had of the success of an at- 
tempt to economize by detail, and under establishments adverse 
to the attempt, may tend to decide this question. 

At the beginning of his Majesty's reign, Lord Talbot came to 
the administration of a great department in the household. I be- 
lieve no man ever entered into his Majesty's service, or into the 
service of any prince, with a more clear integrity, or with more 
zeal and affection for the interest of his master, and, I must 
add, with abilities for a still higher service. Economy was 
then announced as a. maxim of the reign. This noble lord, 
therefore, made several attempts towards a reform. In the 
year 1777, when the King's civil-list debts came last to be paid, 
he explained very fully the success of his undertaking. He 
told the House of Lords that he had attempted to reduce the 
charges of the King's tables and his kitchen. The thing, Sir, 
was not below him. He knew that there is nothing interesting 
in the concerns of men whom we love and honour, that is be- 
neath our attention. "Love," says one of our old poets, "es- 
teems no office mean," — and with still more spirit, "Entire 
affection scorneth nicer hands." Frugality, Sir, is founded on 
the principle, that all riches have limits. A royal household, 
grown enormous, even in the meanest departments, may weaken 
and perhaps destroy all energy in the highest offices of the 
State. The gorging a royal kitchen may stint and famish the 
negotiations of a kingdom. Therefore the object was worthy of 
his, was worthy of any man's attention. 

In consequence of this noble lord's resolution, (as he told the 
other House,) he reduced several tables, and put the persons 
entitled to them upon board wages, much to their own satisfac- 
tion. But, unluckily, subsequent duties requiring constant at- 
tendance, it was not possible to prevent their being fed where 
they were employed: and thus this first step towards economy 
doubled the expense. 

There was another disaster far more doleful than this. I 
shall state it, as the cause of that misfortune lies at the bottom 
of almost all our prodigality. Lord Talbot attempted to reform 
the kitchen ; but such, as he well observed, is the consequence 
of having duty done by one person whilst another enjoys the 



SPEECH ON" ECONOMICAL REFORM. 79 

emoluments, that he found himself frustrated in all his designs. 
On that rock his whole adventure split, his whole scheme of 
economy was dashed to pieces. His department became more 
expensive than ever; the civil-list debt accumulated. Why? 
It was truly from a cause which, though perfectly adequate to 
the effect, one would not have instantly guessed. It was be- 
cause the turnspit® in the King's kitchen was a member of Parlia- 
ment! The King's domestic servants were all undone, his 
tradesmen remained unpaid and became bankrupt, — because the 
turnspit of the King's kitchen was a member of Parliament. His 
Majesty's slumbers were interrupted, his pillow was stuffed 
with thorns, and his peace of mind entirely broken, — because the 
King's turnspit was a member of Parliament. The judges were 
unpaid, the justice of the kingdom bent and gave way, the for- 
eign ministers remained inactive and unprovided, the system of 
Europe was dissolved, the chain of our alliances was broken, all 
the wheels of government at home and abroad were stopped, — 
because the King's turnspit was a member of Parliament. 1 

Such, Sir, was the situation of affairs, and such the cause of 
that situation, when his Majesty came a second time to Parlia- 
ment to desire the payment of those debts which the employ- 
ment of its members in various offices, visible and invisible, 
had occasioned. I believe that a like fate will attend every 
attempt at economy by detail, under similar circumstances, and 
in every department. A complex, operose office of account 
and control is, in itself, and even if members of Parliament had 
nothing to do with it, the most prodigal of all things. The 
most audacious robberies or the most subtle frauds would never 
venture upon such a waste as an over-careful detailed guard 
against them will infallibly produce. In our establishments, 
we frequently see an office of account of an hundred pounds a- 
year expense, and another office of an equal expense to control 
that office, and the whole upon a matter that is not worth 
twenty shillings. 

To avoid, therefore, this minute care, which produces the 
consequences of the most extensive neglect, and. to oblige 
members of Parliament to attend to public cares, and not to the 
servile offices of domestic management, I propose, Sir, to econo- 
mize by principle; that is, I j>ropose to put affairs into that train 

G Formerly, in roasting a turkey or a piece of meat, the way was, to thrust 
through it a steel or iron rod, sharpened to a point at one end, and called a spit, 
and then sling it up before the fire, whero it was kept turning till done. In 
this way I have my self whirled many a turkey and sparerib for thanksgiving 
dinner. This explains what a turnspit is. 

7 Burke is quoting from a speech made by Lord Talbot in the House of 
Lords. 



80 ' BURKE. 

which experience points out as the most effectual, from the 
nature of things, and from the constitution of the human mind. 
In all dealings, where it is possible, the principles of radical 
economy prescribe three things : first, undertaking by the 
great ; secondly, engaging with persons of skill in the sub- 
ject-matter ; thirdly, engaging with those who shall have an 
immediate and direct interest in the proper execution of the 
business. 

To avoid frittering and crumbling down the attention by a 
blind, unsystematic observance of every trifle, it has ever been 
found the best way to do all things which are great in the total 
amount and minute in the component parts, by a general con- 
tract. The principles of trade have so pervaded every species 
of dealing, from the highest to the lowest objects, all transac- 
tions are got so much into system, that we may, at a moment's 
warning, and to a farthing's value, be informed at what rate 
any service may be supplied. iSTo dealing is exempt from the 
possibility of fraud. But by a contract on a matter certain you 
have this advantage, — you are sure to know the utmost extent 
of the fraud to which you are subject. By a contract with a 
person in his own trade you are sure you shall not suffer by want 
of skill. By a short contract you are sure of making it the 
interest of the contractor to exert that skill for the satisfaction 
of his employers. 

I mean to derogate nothing from the diligence or integrity of 
the present, or of any former board of Green Cloth. But what 
skill can members of Parliament obtain in that low kind of 
province? What pleasure can they have in the execution of 
that kind of duty? And if they should neglect it, how does it 
affect their interest, when we know that it is their vote in Par- 
liament, and not their diligence in cookery or catering, that 
recommends them to their office, or keeps them in it? 

I therefore propose that the King's tables (to whatever number 
of tables, or covers to each, he shall think proper to command) 
should be classed by the steward of the household, and should 
be contracted for, according to their rank, by the head or cover ; 
that the estimate and circumstance of the contract should be 
carried to the Treasury to be approved ; and that its faithful 
and satisfactory performance should be reported there previous 
to any payment ; that there, and there only, should the pay- 
ment be made. I propose that men should be contracted with 
only in their proper trade ; and that no member of Parliament 
should be capable of such contract. By this plan, almost all 
the infinite offices under the lord steward may be spared, — to 
the extreme simplification, and to the far better execution, of 
every one of his functions. The .King of Prussia is so served. 



SPEECH 0^ ECONOMICAL REFORM. 81 

He is a great and eminent (though, indeed, a very rare) instance 
of the possibility of uniting, in a mind of vigour and compass, 
an attention to minute objects with the largest views and the 
most complicated plans. His tables are served by contract, and 
by the head. Let me say, that no prince can be ashamed to 
imitate the King of Prussia, and particularly to learn in his 
school, when the problem is, "The best manner of reconciling 
the state of a Court with the support of war." Other Courts, 
I understand, have followed him with effect, and to their 
satisfaction. 

The same clew of principle leads us through the labyrinth of 
the other departments. What, Sir, is there in the office of the 
great wardrobe (which has the care of the King's furniture) that 
may not be executed by the lord chamberlain himself? He 
has an honourable appointment ; he has time sufficient to at- 
tend to the duty ; and he has the vice-chamberlain to assist 
him. Why should not he deal also by contract for all things 
belonging to this office, and carry his estimates first, and his 
report of the execution in its proper time, for payment, directly 
to the Board of Treasury itself ? By a simple operation, (con- 
taining in it a treble control,) the expenses of a department 
which for naked walls, or walls hung with cobwebs, has in a 
few years cost the Crown £150,000, may at length hope for regu- 
lation. But, Sir, the office and its business are at variance. As 
it stands, it serves, not to furnish the palace with its hangings, 
but the Parliament with its dependent members. 

To what end, Sir, does the office of removing ■wardrobe serve at 
all ? Why should a jewel office exist for the sole purpose of tax- 
ing the King's gifts of plate? Its object falls naturally within 
the chamberlain's province, and ought to be under his care and 
inspection without any fee. Why should an office of the robes 
exist, when that of groom of the stole is a sinecure, and when this 
is a proper object of his department? 

All these incumbrances, -which are themselves nuisances, 
produce other incumbrances and other nuisances. For the 
payment of these useless establishments there are no less than 
three useless treasurers; two to hold a purse, and one to play 
with a stick. 8 The treasurer of the household is a mere name. 
The cofferer and the treasurer of the chamber receive and pay 
great sums, which it is not at all necessary they should either 
receive or pay. All the proper officers, servants, and trades- 
men may be enrolled in their several departments, and paid in 
proper classes and times with great simplicity and order, at the 
Exchequer, and by direction from the Treasury. 

8 That is, to carry a wooden rod, which was his badge of office. 



82 BUEKE. 



The Board of Works, which in the seven years preceding 1 
has cost towards £400,000, and (if I recollect rightly) has not 
cost less in proportion from the beginning of the reign, is under 
the very same description of all the other ill-contrived establish- 
ments, and calls for the very same reform. We are to seek for 
the visible signs of all this expense. For all this expense, we 
do not see a building of the size and importance of a pigeon- 
house. Buckingham House was reprised by a bargain with the 
public for one hundred thousand pounds ; and the small house 
at Windsor has been, if I mistake not, undertaken since that 
account was brought before us. The good works of that Board 
of Works are as carefully concealed as other good works ought 
to be : they are perfectly invisible. But though it is the per- 
fection of charity to be concealed, it is, Sir, the property and 
glory of magnificence to appear and stand forward to the eye. 

That board, which ought to be a concern of builders and such- 
like, and of none else, is turned into a junto of members of 
Parliament. That office, too, has a treasury and a paymaster 
of its own ; and, lest the arduous affairs of that important 
exchequer should be too fatiguing, that paymaster has a deputy 
to partake his profits and relieve his cares. I do net believe 
that, either now or in former times, the chief managers of that 
board have made any profit of its abuse. It is, however, no 
good reason that an abusive establishment should subsist, 
because it is of as little private as of public advantage. But 
this establishment has the grand radical fault, the original sin, 
that pervades and perverts all our establishments, — the appara- 
tus is not fitted to the object, nor the workmen to the work. 
Expenses are incurred on the private opinion of an inferior 
establishment, without consulting the principal, who can alone 
determine the proportion which it ought to bear to the other 
establishments of the State, in the order of their relative 
importance. 

I propose, therefore, along with the rest, to pull down this 
whole ill-contrived scaffolding, which obstructs, rather than 
forwards, our public works ; to take away its treasury ; to put 
the whole into the hands of a real builder, who shall not be a 
member of Parliament ; and to oblige him, by a previous esti- 
mate and final payment, to appear twice at the Treasury before 
the public can be loaded. The King's gardens are to come 
under a similar regulation. 

The Hint, though not a department of the household, has the 
same vices. It is a great expense to the nation, chiefly for the 
sake of members of Parliament. It has its officers of parade 
and dignity. It has its treasury, too. It is a sort of corporate 
body, and formerly was a body of great importance,— as much 



777 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 83 

so, on the then scale of things, and the then order of business, 
as the Bank is at this day. It was the great centre of money 
transactions and remittances for our own and for other nations, 
until King Charles the First, among other arbitrary projects 
dictated by despotic necessity, made it withhold the money that 
lay there for remittance. That blow (and happily, too) the Mint 
never recovered. Now it is no bank, no remittance-shop. The 
Mint, Sir, is a manufacture, and it is nothing else ; and it ought 
to be undertaken upon the principles of a manufacture,— that 
is, for the best and cheapest execution, by a contract upon 
proper securities and under proper regulations. 

The artillery is a far greater object : it is a military concern ; 
but having an affinity and kindred in its defects with the estab- 
lishments I am now speaking of, I think it best to speak of it 
along with them. It is, I conceive, an establishment not well 
suited to its martial, though exceedingly well calculated for its 
Parliamentary, purposes. Here there is a treasury, as in all the 
other inferior departments of government. Here the military 
is subordinate to the civil, and the naval confounded with the 
land service. The object, indeed, is much the same in both. 
But, when the detail is examined, it will be found that they 
had better be separated. For a reform of this office, I propose 
to restore things to what (all considerations taken together) is 
their natural order ; to restore them to their just proportion, 
and to their just distribution. I propose, in this military con- 
cern, to render the civil subordinate to the military ; and this 
will annihilate the greatest part of the expense, and all the 
influence belonging to the office. I propose to send the military 
branch to the army, and the naval to the Admiralty ; and I 
intend to perfect and accomplish the whole detail (where it be- 
comes too minute and complicated for legislature, and requires 
exact, official, military, and mechanical knowledge) by a com- 
mission of competent officers in both departments. I propose 
to execute by contract what by contract can be executed, and to 
bring, as much as possible, all estimates to be previously ap- 
proved and finally to be paid by the Treasury. 

Thus, by following the course of Nature, and not the pur- 
poses of politics, or the accumulated patchwork of occasional 
accommodation, this vast, expensive department may be meth- 
odized, its service proportioned to its necessities, and its pay- 
ments subjected to the inspection of the superior minister of 
finance, who is to judge of it on the result of the total collective 
exigencies of the State. This last is a reigning principle 
through my whole plan ; and it is a principle which I hope may 
hereafter be applied to other plans. 

By these regulations taken together, besides the three subor- 



84 BURKE. 

dinate treasuries in the lesser principalities, five other subordi- 
nate treasuries are suppressed. There is taken away the whole 
establishment of detail in the household: the treasurer; the comp- 
troller, (for a comptroller is hardly necessary where there is no 
treasurer;) the cofferer of the household; the treasurer of the cham- 
ber; the master of the household; the whole board of green cloth; — 
and a vast number of subordinate offices in the department of 
the steward of the household, — the whole establishment of the 
great wardrobe, — the removing wardrobe,— the jevjel office, — the 
robes, — the Board of Works, — almost the whole charge of the 
civil branch of the Board of Ordnance, are taken away. All these 
arrangements together will be found-to relieve the nation from 
a vast weight of influence, without distressing, but rather by 
forwarding every public service. When something of this kind 
is done, then the public may begin to breathe. Under other 
governments, a question of expense is only a question of econo- 
my, and it is nothing more : with us, in every question of ex- 
pense there is always a mixture of constitutional considerations. 
It is, Sir, because I wish to keep this business of subordinate 
treasuries as much as I can together, that I brought the ord- 
nance office before you, though it is properly a military depart- 
ment. For the same reason I will now trouble you with my 
thoughts and propositions upon two of the greatest under-treas- 
uries : I mean the office of paymaster of the land forces, or treas- 
urer of the army, and that of the treasurer of the navy. The former 
of these has long been a great object of public suspicion and 
uneasiness. Envy, too, has had its share in the obloquy which 
is cast upon this ofhce. But I am sure that it has no share at 
all in the reflections I shall make upon it, or in the reformations 
that I shall propose. I do not grudge to the honourable gentle- 
man who at present holds the office any of the effects of his 
talents, his merit, or his fortune. He is respectable in all these 
particulars. I follow the constitution of the office without per- 
secuting its holder. It is necessary in all matters of public 
complaint, where men frequently feel right and argue wrong, 
to separate prejudice from reason, and to be very sure, in at- 
tempting the redress of a grievance, that we hit upon its real 
seat and its true nature. Where there is an abuse in office, the 
first thing that occurs in heat is to censure the officer. Our 
natural disposition leads all our inquiries rather to persons than 
to things. But this prejudice is to be corrected by maturer 
thinking. 

. Sir, the profits of the pay office (as an office) are not too great, 
in my opinion, for its duties, and for the rank of the person 
who has generally held it. He has been generally a person of 
the highest rank, — that is to say, a person of eminence and con- 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 85 

sideration in this House. The great and the invidious profits 
of the pay office are from the bank that is held in it. Accord- 
ing to the present course of the office, and according to the 
present mode of accounting there, this bank must necessarily 
exist somewhere. Money is a productive thing ; and when the 
usual time of its demand can be tolerably calculated, it may 
with prudence be safely laid out to the profit of the holder. It 
is on this calculation that the business of banking proceeds. 
But no profit can be derived from the use of money which does 
not make it the interest of the holder to delay his account. 
The process of the Exchequer colludes with this interest. Is 
this collusion from its want of rigour and strictness and great 
regularity of form? The reverse is true. They have in the 
Exchequer brought rigour and formalism to their ultimate per- 
fection. The process against accountants is so rigorous, and in 
a manner so unjust, that correctives must from time to time be 
applied to it. These correctives being discretionary upon the 
case, and generally remitted by the Barons to the Lords of the 
Treasury, as the best judges of the reasons for respite, hearings 
are had, delays are produced, and thus the extreme of rigour in 
office (as usual in all human affairs) leads to the extreme of 
laxity. What with the interested delay of the officer, the ill- 
conceived exactness of the court, the applications for dispensa- 
tions from that exactness, the revival of rigorous process after 
the expiration of the time, and the new rigours producing new 
applications and new enlargements of time, such delays happen 
in the public accounts that they can scarcely ever be closed. 

Besides, Sir, they have a rule in the Exchequer, which, I be- 
lieve, they have founded upon a very ancient statute, that of 
the 51st of Henry the Third, by which it is provided that, 
"when a sheriff or bailiff hath begun his account, none other 
shall be received to account, until he that was first appoint- 
ed hath clearly accounted, and the sum has been received." 
Whether this clause of that statute be the ground of that ab- 
surd practice I am not quite able to ascertain. But it has very 
generally prevailed, though I am told that of late they have be- 
gun to relax from it. In consequence of forms adverse to sub- 
stantial account, we have a long succession of paymasters and 
their representatives who have never been admitted to account, 
although perfectly ready to do so. 

As the extent of our wars has scattered the accountants un- 
der the paymaster into every part of the globe, the grand and 
sure paymaster, Death, in all his shapes, calls these account- 
ants to another reckoning. Death, indeed, domineers over 
every thing but the forms of the Exchequer. Over these he 
has no power. They are impassive and immortal. The audit 



8G BURKE. 

of the Exchequer, more severe than the audit to which the 
accountants have gone, demands proofs which in the nature of 
things are difficult, sometimes impossible to be had. In this 
respect, too, rigour, as usual, defeats itself. Then the Ex- 
chequer never gives a particular receipt, or clears a man of his 
account as far as it goes. A final acquittance (or a quietus, as 
they term it) is scarcely ever to be obtained. Terrors and 
ghosts of unlaid accountants haunt the houses of their children 
from generation to generation. Eamilies, in the course of suc- 
cession, fall into minorities ; the inheritance comes into the 
hands of females ; and very perplexed affairs are often deliv- 
ered over into the hands of negligent guardians and faithless 
stewards. So that the demand remains, when the advantage of 
the money is gone, — if ever any advantage at all has been made 
of it. This is a cause of infinite distress to families, and be- 
comes a source of influence to an extent that can scarcely be 
imagined, but by those who have taken some pains to trace it. 
The mildness of government, in the employment of useless and 
dangerous powers, furnishes no reason for their continuance. 

As things stand, can you in justice (except perhaps in that 
over-perfect kind of justice which has obtained by its merits the 
title of the opposite vice 9 ) insist that any man should, by the 
course of his office, keep a bank from whence he is to derive no 
advantage? that a man should be subject to demands below, 
and be in a manner refused an acquittance above? that he 
should transmit an original sin and inheritance of vexation to 
his posterity, without a power of compensating himself in some 
way or other for so perilous a situation ? We know that, if the 
paymaster should deny himself the advantages of his bank, the 
public, as things stand, is not the richer for it by a single 
shilling. This I thought it necessary to say as to the offensive 
magnitude of the profits of this office, that we may proceed in 
reformation on the principles of reason, and not on the feelings 
of envy. 

The treasurer of the navy is, mutatis mutandis, in the same 
circumstances. Indeed, all accountants are. Instead of the 
present mode, which is troublesome to the officer and unprofit- 
able to the public, I propose to substitute something more ef- 
fectual than rigour, which is the worst exactor in the world. I 
mean to remove the very temptations to delay ; to facilitate the 
account ; and to transfer this bank, now of private emolument, 
to the public. The Crown will suffer no wrong at least from the 
pay offices ; and its terrors will no longer reign over the fami- 
lies of those who hold or have held them. I propose that these 

9 Alluding to the old proverbial saying, Summumjus summa injuria. 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 87 

offices should be no longer banks or treasuries, but mere offices of 
administration. I propose, first, that the present paymaster and 
the treasurer of the navy should carry into the Exchequer the 
whole body of the vouchers for what they have paid over to 
deputy-paymasters, to regimental agents, or to any of those to 
whom they have and ought to have paid money. I propose that 
those vouchers shall be admitted as actual payments in their 
accounts, and that the persons to whom the money has been 
paid shall then stand charged in the Exchequer in their place. 
After this process, they shall be debited or charged for nothing 
but the money-balance that remains in their hancls. 

I am conscious, Sir, that, if this balance (which they could not 
expect to be so suddenly demanded by any usual process of the 
Exchequer) should now be exacted all at once, not only their 
ruin, but a ruin of others to an extent which I do not like to 
think of, but which I can well conceive, and which you may 
well conceive, might be the consequence. I told you, Sir, when 
I promised before the holidays to bring in this plan, that I 
never would suffer any man or description of men to suffer from 
errors that naturally have grown out of the abusive constitu- 
tion of those offices which I propose to regulate. If I cannot 
reform with equity, I will not reform at all. 

For the regulation of past accounts, I shall therefore propose 
such a mode as men, temperate and prudent, make use of in 
the management of their private affairs, when their accounts 
are various, perplexed, and of long standing. I would there- 
fore, after their example, divide the public debts into three 
sorts, — good, bad, and doubtful. In looking over the public 
accounts, I should never dream of the blind mode of the Ex- 
chequer, which regards things in the abstract, and knows no 
difference in the quality of its debts or the circumstances of its 
debtors. By this means it fatigues itself, it vexes others, it 
often crushes the poor, it lets escape the rich, or, in a fit of 
mercy or carelessness, declines all means of recovering its just 
demands. Content with the eternity of its claims, it enjoys its 
Epicurean divinity with Epicurean languor. But it is proper 
that all sorts of accounts should be closed some time or other, — 
by payment, by composition, or by oblivion. Expedit reipublicce 
ut sit finis litium. 1 Constantly taking along with me, that an ex- 
treme rigour is sure to arm every thing against it, and at length 
to relax into a supine neglect, I propose, Sir, that even the best, 
soundest, and most recent debts should be put into instalments, 
for the mutual benefit of the accountant and the public. 

In proportion, however, as I am tender of the past, I would 

1 It is the interest of the State that lawsuits should come to an end. 



88 BURKE. 

be provident of the future. All money that was formerly im- 
prested to the two great imy offices I would have imprested 2 
in future to the Bank of England. These offices should in 
future receive no more than cash sufficient for small payments. 
Their other payments ought to be made by drafts on the Bank, 
expressing the service. A check account from both offices, 
of drafts and receipts, should be annually made up in the 
Exchequer, — charging the Bank in account with the cash bal- 
ance, but not demanding the payment until there is an order 
from the Treasury, in consequence of a vote of Parliament. 

As I did not, Sir, deny to the paymaster the natural profits 
of the bank that was in his hands, so neither would I to the 
Bank of England. A share of that profit might be derived to 
the public in various ways. My favourite mode is this, — that, 
in compensation for the use of this money, the Bank may take 
upon themselves, first, the charge of the Mint, to which they are 
already, by their charter, obliged to bring in a great deal of 
bullion annually to be coined. In the next place, I mean that 
they should take upon themselves the charge of remittances to 
our troops abroad. This is a species of dealing from which, by 
the same charter, they are not debarred. One and a quarter 
per cent will be saved instantly thereby to the public on very 
large sums of money. This will be at once a matter of economy 
and. a considerable reduction of influence, by taking away a 
private contract of an expensive nature. If the Bank, which is 
a great corporation, and of course receives the least profits from 
the money in their custody, should of itself refuse or be per- 
suaded to refuse this offer upon those terms, I can speak with 
some confidence that one at least, if not both parts of the condi- 
tion would be received, and gratefully received, by several 
bankers of eminence. There is no banker who will not be at 
least as good security as any paymaster of the forces, or any 
treasurer of the navy, that have ever been bankers to the pub- 
lic : as rich at least as my Lord Chatham, or my Lord Holland, 3 
or either of the honourable gentlemen who now hold the offices, 
were at the time that they entered into them ; or as ever the 
whole establishment of the Mint has been at any period. 

2 Imprested (a very rare word) is advanced on loan. So, in the case here 
supposed, the government would advance money to the bank for payment of the 
army, and take a certain rate of interest on the money while it remained in the 
hands of the bank. 

3 William Pitt the elder was for some time paymaster of the forces in the 
Pelham ministry; as Henry Fox, afterwards Earl of Holland, also was, under 
the Duke of Newcastle. It may be easily understood that, though the paymaster 
was not greatly enriched by his salary, yet, as he had the use of the money 
•while it lay in his hands, his office was one of the most lucrative in the State; 
eometimes no less than £40,000 a-year. 



SPEECH ON" ECONOMICAL REFORM. 89 

These, Sir, are the outlines of the plan I mean to follow in 
suppressing these two large subordinate treasuries. I now 
come to another subordinate treasury, — I mean that of the pay- 
master of the pensions; for which purpose I reenter the limits of 
the civil establishment : I departed from those limits in pursuit 
of a principle ; and, following the same game in its doubles, I am 
brought into those limits again. That treasury and that office 
I mean to take away, and to transfer the payment of every 
name, mode, and denomination of pensions to the Exchequer. 
The present course of diversifying the same object can answer 
no good purpose, whatever its use may be to purposes of 
another kind. There are also other lists of pensions ; and I 
mean that they should all be hereafter paid at one and the 
same place. The whole of the new consolidated list I mean 
to. reduce to £60,000 a-year, which sum I intend it shall never 
exceed. I think that sum will fully answer as a reward to all 
real merit and a provision for all real public charity that is 
ever like to be placed upon the list. If any merit of an extraor- 
dinary nature should emerge before that reduction is com- 
pleted, I have left it open for an address of either House of 
Parliament to provide for the case. To all other demands it 
must be answered, with regret, but firmness, "The public is 
poor." 

I do not propose, as I told you before Christmas, to take 
away any pension. I know that the public seem to call for a 
reduction of such of them as shall appear unmerited. As a 
censorial act, and punishment of an abuse, it might answer 
some purpose. But this can make no part of my plan. I mean 
to proceed by bill ; and I cannot stop for such an inquiry. I 
know some gentlemen may blame me. It is with great sub- 
mission to better judgments that I recommend it to considera- 
tion, that a critical retrospective examination of the pension 
list, upon the principle of merit, can never serve for my basis. 
It cannot answer, according to my plan, any effectual purpose 
of economy, or of future permanent reformation. The process 
in any way will be entangled and difficult, and it will be in- 
finitely slow : there is a danger, that, if we turn our line of 
march, now directed towards the grand object, into this more 
laborious than useful detail of operations, we shall never arrive 
at our end. 

The King, Sir, has been by the Constitution appointed sole 
judge of the merit for which a pension is to be given. We have 
a right, undoubtedly, to canvass this, as we have to canvass 
every act of government. But there is a material difference 
between an office to be reformed and a pension taken away for 
demerit. In the former case, no charge is implied against the 



90 BURKE. 

holder; in the latter, his character is slurred, as well as his 
lawful emolument affected. The former process is against the 
thing ; the second, against the person. The pensioner cer- 
tainly, if he pleases, has a right to stand on his own defence, 
to plead his possession, and to bottom his title on the compe- 
tency of the Crown to give him what he holds. Possessed and 
on the defensive as he is, he will not be obliged to prove his 
special merit, in order to justify the act of legal discretion, now 
turned into his property, according to his tenure. The very 
act, he will contend, is a legal presumption, and an implication 
of his merit. If this be so, from the natural force of all legal 
presumption, he would put us to the difficult proof that he has 
no merit at all. But other questions would arise in the course 
of such an inquiry, — that is, questions of the merit when 
weighed against the proportion of the reward ; then the diffi- 
culty will be much greater. 

The difficulty will not, Sir, I am afraid, be much less, if we 
pass to the person really guilty in the question of an unmerited 
pension : the Minister himself. I admit that, when called to 
account for the execution of a trust, he might fairly be obliged 
to prove the affirmative, and to state the merit for which the 
pension is given, though on the pensioner himself such a pro- 
cess would be hard. If in this examination we proceed me- 
thodically, and so as to avoid all suspicion of partiality and 
prejudice, we must take the pensions in order of time, or 
merely alphabetically. The very first pension to which we 
come, in either of these ways, may appear the most grossly 
unmerited of any. But the Minister may very possibly show 
that he knows nothing of the putting-on this pension ; that it 
was prior in time to his administration ; that the Minister who 
laid it on is dead : and then we are thrown back upon the pen- 
sioner himself, and plunged into all our former difficulties. 
Abuses, and gross ones, I doubt not, would appear, and to the 
correction of wdiich I would readily give my hand : but when I 
consider that pensions have not generally been affected by the 
revolutions of Ministry ; as I know not where such inquiries 
would stop ; and as an absence of merit is a negative and loose 
thing; -—one might be led to derange the order of families 
founded on the probable continuance of this kind of income ; 
I might hurt children; I might injure creditors;— I really 
think it the more prudent course not to follow the letter of the 
petitions. If we fix this mode of inquiry as a basis, we shall, I 
fear, end as Parliament has often ended under similar circum- 
stances. There will be great delay, .much confusion, much 
inequality in our proceedings. But what presses me most of all 
is this,— that, though we should strike off all the unmerited 






SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. 91 

pensions, while the power of the Crown remains unlimited, the 
very same undeserving persons might afterwards return to the 
very same list ; or, if they did not, other persons, meriting as 
little as they do, might be put upon it to an undefinable 
amount. This, I think, is the pinch of the grievance. 

For these reasons, Sir, I am obliged to waive this mode of 
proceeding as any part of my plan. In a plan of reformation, it 
would be one of my maxims, that, when I know of an establish- 
ment which may be subservient to useful purposes, and which 
at the same time, from its discretionary nature, is liable to a 
very great perversion from those purposes, I would limit the 
quantity of the power that might be so abused. For I am sure that 
in all such cases the rewards of merit will have very narrow 
bounds, and that partial or corrupt favour will be infinite. 
This principle is not arbitrary, but the limitation of the specific 
quantity must be so in some measure. I therefore state £60,000, 
leaving it open to the House to enlarge or contract the sum as 
they shall see, on examination, that the discretion I use is 
scanty or liberal. The whole account of the pensions of all de- 
nominations which have been laid before us amounts, for a pe- 
riod of seven years, to considerably more than £100,000 a-year. 
To what the other lists amount I know not. That will be seen 
hereafter. But, from those that do appear, a saving will accrue 
to the public, at one time or other, of £40,000 a-year ; and we 
had better, in my opinion, to let it fall in naturally than to tear 
it crude and unripe from the stalk. 

There is a great deal of uneasiness among the people upon an 
article which I must class under the head of pensions : I mean 
the great patent offices in the Exchequer. They are in reality and 
substance no other than pensions, and in no other light shall I 
consider them. They are sinecures ; they are always executed 
by deputy ; the duty of the principal is as nothing. They dif- 
fer, however, from the pensions on the list in some particulars. 
They are held for life. I think, with the public, that the profits 
of those places are grown enormous ; the magnitude of those 
profits, and the nature of them, both call for reformation. The 
nature of those profits, which grow out of the public distress, is 
itself invidious and grievous. But I fear that reform cannot be 
immediate. I find myself under a restriction. These places, 
and others of the same kind, which are held for life, have been 
considered as property. They have been given as a provision 
for children ; they have been the subject of family settlements; 
they have been the security of creditors. What the law re- 
spects shall be sacred to me. If the barriers of the law should 
be broken down, upon ideas of convenience, even of public con- 
venience, we shall have no longer any thing certain among us. 



92 BURKE. 

If the discretion of power is once let loose upon property, we 
can be at no loss to determine whose power and what discretion 
it is that will prevail at last. It would be wise to attend upon 
the order of things, and not to attempt to outrun the slow, but 
smooth and even course of Nature. There are occasions, I ad- 
mit, of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that they 
supersede all laws. Law, being only made for the benefit of 
the community, cannot in any one of its parts resist a demand 
which may comprehend the total of the public interest. To be 
sure, no law can set itself up against the cause and reason of all 
law ; but such a case very rarely happens, and this most cer- 
tainly is not such a case. The mere time of the reform is by no 
means worth the sacrifice of a principle of law. Individuals 
pass like shadows ; but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. 
The difference, therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to 
private people is immense, to the State is nothing. At any 
rate, it is better, if possible, to reconcile our economy with our 
laws than to set them at variance, — a quarrel which in the end 
must be destructive to both. 

My idea, therefore, is, to reduce those offices to fixed salaries, 
as the present lives and reversions shall successively fall. -I 
mean, that the office of the great auditor (the auditor of the 
receipt) shall be reduced to £3000 a-year ; and the auditors of 
the imprest, and the rest of the principal officers, to fixed ap- 
pointments of £1500 a-year each. It will not be difficult to cal- 
culate the value of this fall of lives to the public, when we shall 
have obtained a just account of the present income of those 
places ; and we shall obtain that account with great facility, if 
the present possessors are not alarmed with any apprehension 
of danger to their freehold office. 

I know, too, that it will be demanded of me, how it comes 
that, since I admit these offices to be no better than pensions, I 
chose, after the principle of law had been satisfied, to retain 
them at all. To this, Sir, I answer that, conceiving it to be a 
fundamental part of the Constitution of this country, and of the 
reason of State in every country, that there must be means of 
rewarding public service, those means will be incomplete, and 
indeed wholly insufficient for that purpose, if there should be 
no further reward for that service than the daily wages it 
receives during the pleasure of the Crown. 

Whoever seriously considers the excellent argument of Lord 
Somers, in the Bankers' Case, will see he bottoms himself upon 
the very same maxim which I do ; and one of his principal 
grounds of doctrine for the alienability of the domain 4 in Eng- 

4 Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation of land. 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL REFORM. 93 

land, contrary to the maxim of the law in France, he lays in 
the constitutional policy of furnishing a permanent reward to 
public service, of making that reward the origin of families, and 
the foundation of wealth as well as of honours. It is indeed 
the only genuine, unadulterated origin of nobility. It is a 
great principle in government, a principle at the very founda- 
tion of the whole structure. The other judges who held the 
same doctrine went beyond Lord Somers with regard to the 
remedy which they thought was given by law against the Crown 
upon the grant of pensions. Indeed, no man knows, when he 
cuts off the incitements to a virtuous ambition, and the just 
rewards of public service, what infinite mischief he may do his 
country through all generations. Such saving to the public 
may prove the worst mode of robbing it. The Crown, which 
has in its hands the trust of the daily pay for national service, 
ought to have in its hands also the means for the repose of pub- 
lic labour and the fixed settlement of acknowledged merit. 
There is a time when the •weather-'beaten vessels of the State 
ought to come into harbour. They must at length have a re- 
treat from the malice of rivals, from the perfidy of political 
friends, and the inconstancy of the people. Many of the per- 
sons who in all times have filled the great offices of State have 
been younger brothers, who had originally little, if any fortune. 
These offices do not furnish the means of amassing wealth. 
There ought to be some power in the Crown of granting pen- 
sions out of the reach of its own caprices. An entail of depend- 
ence is a bad reward of merit. 

I would therefore leave to the Crown the possibility of confer- 
ring some favours which, whilst they are received as a reward, 
do not operate as corruption. When men receive obligations 
from the Crown, through the pious hands of fathers or of con- 
nections as venerable as the paternal, the dependences which 
arise from thence are the obligations of gratitude, and not the 
fetters of servility. Such ties originate in virtue, and they pro- 
mote it. They continue men in those habitudes of friendship, 
those political connections, and those political principles, in 
which they began life. They are antidotes against a corrupt 
levity, instead of causes of it. What an unseemly spectacle 
would it afford, what a disgrace would it be to the common- 
wealth that suffered such things, to see the hopeful son of a 
meritorious Minister begging his bread at the door of that 
Treasury from whence his father dispensed the economy of an 
empire, and promoted the happiness and glory of his country ! 
Why should he be obliged to prostrate his honour and to sub- 
mit his principles at the levee of some proud favourite, shoul- 
dered and thrust aside by every impudent pretender on the 



94 BURKE. 

very spot where a few days before lie saw himself adored, — 
obliged to cringe to the author of the calamities of his House, 
and to kiss the hands that are red with his father's blood? — 
!N"o, Sir, these things are unfit, — they are intolerable. 

Sir, I shall be asked, why I do not choose to destroy those 
offices which are pensions, and appoint pensions under the 
direct title in their stead. I allow that in some cases it leads to 
abuse, to have things appointed for one purpose and applied to 
another. I have no great objection to such a change;* but I 
do not think it quite prudent for me to propose it. If I should 
take away the present establishment, the burden of proof rests 
upon me, that so many pensions, and no more, and to such an 
amount each, and no more, are necessary for the public service. 
This is what I can never prove ; for it is a thing incapable of 
definition. I do not like to take away an object that I think 
answers my purpose, in hopes of getting it back again in a bet- 
ter shape. People will bear an old establishment, when its 
excess is corrected, who will revolt at a new one. I do not 
think these office-pensions to be more in number than sufficient: 
but on that point the House will exercise its discretion. As 
to abuse, I am convinced that very few trusts in the ordinary 
course of administration have admitted less abuse than this. 
Efficient Ministers have been their own paymasters, it is true ; 
but their very partiality has operated as a kind of justice, and 
still it was service that was paid. When we look over this 
Exchequer list, we find it filled with the descendants of the 
Yfalpoles, of the Pelhams, of the To wnshends,— names to 
whom this country owes its liberties, and to whom his Majesty 
owes his crown. It was in one of these lines that the immense 
and envied employment he now holds came to a certain duke, 5 
who is now probably sitting quietly at a very good dinner 
directly under us, and acting high life below stairs, whilst we, 
his masters, are filling our mouths with unsubstantial sounds, 
and talking of hungry economy over his head. But he is the 
elder branch of an ancient and decayed House, joined to and 
repaired by the reward of services done by another. I respect 
the original title, and the first purchase of merited wealth and 
honour through all its descents, through all its transfers, and 
all its assignments. May such fountains never be dried up ! 
May they ever flow with their original purity, and refresh and 
fructify the commonwealth for ages! 

Sir, I think myself bound to give you my reasons as clearly 
and as fully for stopping in the course of reformation as for 



5 The Duke of Newcastle, who then had a clining.room underneath the House 
of Commons. 






SPEECH 02* ECONOMICAL EEFOKM. 95 

proceeding in it. My limits are the rules of law, the rules of 
policy, and the service of the State. This is the reason why 
I am not able to intermeddle with another article, which seems 
to be a specific object in several of the petitions : I mean the 
reduction of exorbitant emoluments to efficient offices. If I 
knew of any real efficient office which did possess exorbitant 
emoluments, I should be extremely desirous of reducing them. 
Others may know of them ; I do not. I am not possessed of an 
exact common measure between real service and its reward. 
I am very sure that States do sometimes receive services 
which it is hardly in their power to reward according to their 
worth. If I were to give my judgment with regard to this 
country, I do not think the great efficient offices of the State to 
be overpaid. The service of the public is a thing which cannot 
be put to auction, and struck down to those who will agree to 
execute it the cheapest. When the proportion between reward 
and service is our object, we must always consider of what 
nature the service is, and what sort of men they are that must 
perform it. "What is just payment for one kind of labour, and 
full encouragement for one kind of talents, is fraud and dis- 
couragement to others. Many of the great offices have much 
duty to do, and much expense of representation to maintain. 
A Secretary of State, for instance, must not appear sordid in 
the eyes of the ministers of other nations ; neither ought our 
ministers abroad to appear contemptible in the Courts where 
they reside. In all offices of duty, there is almost necessarily a 
great neglect of all domestic affairs. A person in high office 
can rarely take a view of his family-house. If he sees that the 
State takes no detriment, the State must see that his affairs 
should take as little. 

I will even go so far as to affirm that, if men were willing to 
serve in such situations without salary, they ought not to be 
permitted to do it. Ordinary service must be secured by the 
motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say that 
that State which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues 
will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy 
and corruption. An honourable and fair profit is the best secu- 
rity against avarice and rapacity ; as, in all things else, a lawful 
and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauch- 
ery and excess. For as wealth is power, so all power will infal- 
libly draw wealth to itself by some means or other ; and when 
men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their 
means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to- 
infinity. This is true in all the parts of administration, as well 
as in the whole. If any individual were to decline his appoint- 
ments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambi- 



96 BURKE. 

tion over unpretending service ; it might breed invidious com- 
parisons ; it might tend to destroy whatever little unity and 
agreement may be found among Ministers. And, after all, 
when an ambitious man had run down his competitors by a fal- 
lacious show of disinterestedness, and fixed himself in power 
by that means, what security is there that he would not change 
his course, and claim as an indemnity ten times more than he 
has given up? 6 

This rule, like every other, may admit its exceptions. When 
a great man has some one great object in view to be achieved in 
a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk 
out of all the common roads, and, if his fortune permits it, to 
hold himself out as a splendid example. I am told that some- 
thing of this kind is now doing in a country near us. But this 
is for a short race, the training for a heat or two, and not the 
proper preparation for the regular stages of a methodical jour- 
ney. I am speaking of establishments, and not of men. 

It may be expected, Sir, that, when I am giving my reasons 
Why I limit myself in the reduction of employments, or of their 
profits, I should say something of those which seem of eminent 
inutility in the State : I mean the number of officers who, by 
their places, are attendant on the person of the King. Consid- 
ering the commonwealth merely as such, and considering those 
officers only as relative to the direct purposes of the State, I 
admit that they are of no use at all. But there are many things 
in the constitution of establishments, which appear of little 
value on the first view, which in a secondary and oblique man- 
ner produce very material advantages. It was on full consid- 
eration that I determined not to lessen any of the offices of 
honour about the Crown, in their number or their emoluments. 
These emoluments, except in one or two cases, do not much 
more than answer the charge of attendance. Men of condition 
naturally love to be about a Court ; and women of condition 
love it much more. But there is in all regular attendance so 
much of constraint, that, if it were a mere charge, without any 
compensation, you would soon have the Court deserted by all 
the nobility of the kingdom. 

Sir, the most serious mischiefs would follow from such a de- 
sertion. Kings are naturally lovers of low company. They 
are so elevated above all the rest of mankind, that they must 
look upon all their subjects as on a level. They are rather apt 
to hate than to love their nobility, on account of the occasional 
resistance to their will which will be made by their virtue, their 

6 So I have read somewhere, in Montaigne, I think, that supercelestial pro- 
fessions are apt to be attended or followed by subterranean practices. 






SPEECH OH" ECONOMICAL REFORM. 07 

petulance, or their pride. It must indeed be admitted that 
many of the nobility are as perfectly willing to act the part of 
flatterers, tale-bearers, parasites, pimps, and buffoons, as any of 
the lowest and vilest of mankind can possibly be. But they are 
not properly qualified for this object of their ambition. The 
want of a regular education, and early habits, and some lurking 
remains of their dignity, will never permit them to become a 
match for an Italian eunuch, a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, 
or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman emperors, 
almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands ; 
and the mischief increased every day till the decline and final 
ruin of the empire. It is therefore of very great importance 
(provided the thing is not overdone) to contrive such an estab- 
lishment as must, almost whether a prince will or not, bring 
into daily and hourly offices about his person a great number of 
his first nobility ; and it is rather an useful prejudice that gives 
them a pride in such a servitude. Though they are not much 
the better for a Court, a Court will be much the better for 
them. I have therefore not attempted to reform any of the 
offices of honour about the King's person. 

There are indeed two offices in his stables which are sine- 
cures : by the change of manners, and indeed by the nature of 
the thing, they must be so: I mean the several keepers of buck- 
hounds, stag-hounds, fox-hounds, and harriers. They answer 
no purpose of utility or of splendour. These I propose to 
abolish. It is not proper that great noblemen should be keep- 
ers of dogs, though they were the King's dogs. 

In every part of the scheme, I have endeavoured that no pri- 
mary, and that even no secondary, service of the State should 
suffer by its frugality. I mean to touch no offices but such as I 
am perfectly sure are either of no use at all, or not of any use in 
the least assignable proportion to the burden with which they 
load the revenues of the kingdom, and to the influence with 
which they oppress the freedom of Parliamentary deliberation ; 
for which reason there are but two offices, which are properly 
State offices, that J have a desire to reform. 

The first of them is the new office of Third Secretary of State, 
which is commonly called Secretary of State for the Colonies. 

We know that all the correspondence of the colonies had 
been, until within a few years, carried on by the Southern Sec- 
retary of State, and that this department has not been shunned 
upon account of the weight of its duties, but, on the contrary, 
much sought on account of its patronage. Indeed, he must be 
poorly acquainted with the history of office who does not know 
how very lightly the American functions have always leaned 
on the shoulders of the ministerial Atlas who has upheld that 



98 BUKKE. 

side of the sphere. Undoubtedly, great temper and judgment 
was requisite in the management of the colony politics ; but 
the official detail was a trifle. Since the new appointment, a 
train of unfortunate accidents has brought before us almost the 
whole correspondence of this favourite secretary's office since 
the first day of its establishment. I will say nothing of its au- 
spicious foundation, of the quality of its correspondence, or of 
the effects that have ensued from it. I speak merely of its quan- 
tity, which we know would have been little or no addition to the 
trouble of whatever office had its hands the fullest. But what 
has been the real condition of the old office of Secretary of 
State ? Have their velvet bags and their red boxes been so full 
that nothing more could possibly be crammed into them ? 

A correspondence of a curious nature has been lately pub- 
lished. In that correspondence, Sir, we find the opinion of a 
noble person who is thought to be the grand manufacturer of 
administrations, and therefore the best judge of the quality of 
his work. He was of opinion that there was but one man of 
diligence and industry in the whole administration : it was the 
late Earl of Suffolk. The noble lord lamented, very justly, that 
this statesman, of so much mental vigour, was almost wholly 
disabled from the exertion of it by his bodily infirmities. Lord 
Suffolk, dead to the State long before he was dead to Nature, at 
last paid his tribute to the common treasury to which we must 
all be taxed. But so little want was found even of his inten- 
tional industry, that the office, vacant in regard to its duties 
long before, continued vacant even in nomination and appoint- 
ment for a year after his death. The whole of the laborious 
and arduous correspondence of this empire rested solely upon 
the activity and energy of Lord Weymouth. 

It is therefore demonstrable, since one diligent man was fully 
equal to the duties of the two offices, that two diligent men will 
be equal to the duty of three. The business of the new office, 
which I shall propose to you to suppress, is by no means too 
much to be returned to either of the secretaries which remain. 
If this dust in the balance should be thought too heavy, it may 
be divided between them both,— North America (whether free 
or reduced) to the Northern Secretary, the West Indies to the 
Southern. It is not necessary that I should say more upon the 
inutility of this office. It is burning daylight. 7 But before I 
have done, I shall just remark that the history of this office is 
too recent to suffer us to forget that it was made for the mere 
convenience of the arrangements of political intrigue, and not 

7 " Burning daylight," that is, bimiing candles when the Sun shines, is an old 
phrase for wasting time. So in Romeo and Juliet, i. 4 : " Come, we bum daylight, 
ho!" 




SPEECH OK ECOKOMICAL REFORM. 90 

for the service of the State, — that it was made in order to give 
a colour to an exorbitant increase of the civil list, and in the 
same act to bring a new accession to the loaded compost-heap 
of corrupt influence. 

There is, Sir, another office which was not long since closely 
connected with this of the American Secretary, but has been 
lately separated from it for the very same purpose for which it 
had been conjoined: I mean the sole purpose of all the separa- 
tions and all the conjunctions that have been lately made, — a 
job. I speak, Sir, of the Board of Trade and Plantations. This 
Board is a sort of temperate bed of influence, a sort of gently 
ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive 
salaries of a thousand a-year for a certain given time, in order 
to mature, at a proper season, a claim to two thousand, granted 
for doing less, and on the credit of having toiled so long in that 
inferior, laborious department. 

I have known that Board, off and on, for a great number of 
years. Both of its pretended objects have been much the ob- 
jects of my study, if I have a right to call any pursuit of mine 
by so respectable a name. I can assure the House (and I hope 
they will not think that I risk my little credit lightly) that, 
without meaning to convey the least reflection upon any one of 
its members, past or present, it is a board which, if not mis- 
chievous, is of no use at all. 

You will be convinced, Sir, that I am not mistaken, if you 
reflect how generally it is true, that commerce, the principal 
object of that office, flourishes most when left to itself. Inter- 
est, the great guide of commerce, is not a blind one. It is very 
well able to find its own way ; and its necessities are its best 
laws. But if it were possible, in the nature of things, that the 
young should direct the old, and the inexperienced instruct the 
knowing,— if a board in the State was the best tutor for the 
counting-house, — if the desk ought to read lectures to the an- 
vil, and the pen to usurp the place of the shuttle,— yet in any 
matter of regulation we know that Board must act with as little 
authority as skill.* The prerogative of the Crown is utterly 
inadequate to the object ; because all regulations are, in their 
nature, restrictive of some liberty. In the reign, indeed, of 
Charles the First, the Council, or Committees of Council, were 
never a moment unoccupied with affairs of trade. But even 
Where they had no ill intention, (which was sometimes the 
case,) trade and manufacture suffered infinitely from their inju- 
dicious tampering. But, since that period, whenever regulation 
is wanting, (for I do not deny that sometimes it may be want- 
ing,) Parliament constantly sits ; and Parliament alone is com- 
petent to such regulation. We want no instruction from boards 



100 BURKE. 

of trade, or from any other board ; and God forbid we should 
give the least attention to their reports ! Parliamentary inquiry 
is the only mode of obtaining Parliamentary information. 
There is more real knowledge to be obtained by attending the 
detail of business in the committees above stairs than ever did 
come, or ever will come, from any board in this kingdom, or 
from all of them together. An assiduous member of Parlia- 
ment will not be the worse instructed there for not being paid 
a thousand a-year for learning his lesson. And now that I 
speak of the committees above stairs, I must say that, having 
till lately attended them a good deal, I have observed that no 
description of members give so little attendance, either to com- 
municate or to obtain instruction upon matters of commerce, 
as the honourable members of the grave Board of Trade. 
I really do not recollect that I have ever seen one of them in 
that sort of business. Possibly some members may have bet- 
ter memories, and may call to mind some job that may have ac- 
cidentally brought one or other of them, at one time or other, 
to attend a matter of commerce. 

This Board, Sir, has had both its original formation and its 
regeneration in a job. In a job it was conceived, and in a job 
its mother brought it forth. It made one among those showy 
and specious impositions which one of the experiment-making 
administrations of Charles the Second held out to delude the 
people, and to be substituted in the place of the real service 
which they might expect from a Parliament annually sitting. It 
was intended, also, to corrupt that body, whenever it should be 
permitted to sit. It was projected in the year 1668, and it contin- 
ued in a tottering and rickety childhood for about three or four 
years : for it died in the year 1673, a babe of as little hopes as 
ever swelled the bills of mortality in the article of convulsed or 
overlaid children who have hardly stepped over the threshold 
of life. 

It was buried with little ceremony, and never more thought 
of until the reign of King William, when, in the strange vicissi- 
tude of neglect and vigour, of good and ill success that attended 
his wars, in the year 1695, the trade was distressed beyond all 
example of former sufferings by the piracies of the French 
cruisers. This suffering incensed, and, as it should seem, very 
justly incensed, the House of Commons. In this ferment, they 
struck, not only at the administration, but at the very constitu- 
tion of the executive government. They attempted to form in 
Parliament a board for the protection of trade, which, as they 
planned it, was to draw to itself a great part, if not the whole, 
of the functions and powers both of the Admiralty and of the 
Treasury; and thus, by a Parliamentary delegation of office and 



SPEECH ON ECONOMICAL EEFORM. 101 

officers, they threatened absolutely to separate these depart- 
ments from the whole system of the executive government, and 
of course to vest the most leading and essential of its attributes 
in this Board. As the executive government was in a manner 
convicted of a dereliction of its functions, it was with infinite 
difficulty that this blow was warded off in that session. There 
was a threat to renew the same attempt in the next. To pre- 
vent the effect of this manoeuvre, the Court opposed another 
manoeuvre to it, and, in the year 1696, called into life this Board 
of Trade, which had slept since 1673. 

This, in a few words, is the history of the regeneration of the 
Board of Trade. It has perfectly answered its purposes. It 
was intended to quiet the minds of the people, and to compose 
the ferment that was then strongly working in Parliament. 
The courtiers were too happy to be able to substitute a board 
which they knew would be useless in the place of one that they 
feared would be dangerous. Thus the Board of Trade was 
reproduced in a job ; and perhaps it is the only instance of a 
public body which has never degenerated, but to this hour pre- 
serves all the health and vigour of its primitive institution. 

This Board of Trade and Plantations has not been of any use 
to the colonies, as colonies : so little of use, that the flourishing 
settlements of New England, of Virginia, and of Maryland, and 
all our wealthy colonies in the West Indies, were of a date prior 
to the first board of Charles the Second. Pennsylvania and 
Carolina were settled during its dark quarter, in the interval 
between the extinction of the first and the formation of the 
second board. Two colonies alone owe their origin to that 
Board. Georgia, which, till lately, has made a very slow prog- 
ress, — and never did make any progress at all, until it had 
wholly got rid of all the regulations which the Board of Trade 
had moulded into its original constitution. That colony has 
cost the nation very great sums of money ; whereas the colo- 
nies which have had the fortune of not being godfathered by 
the Board of Trade never cost the nation a shilling, except 
what has been so properly spent in losing them. But the colo- 
ny of Georgia, weak as it was, carried with it to the last hour, 
and carries, even in its present dead, pallid visage, the perfect 
resemblance of its parents. It always had, and it now has, an 
establishment, paid by the public of England, for the sake of the 
influence of the Crown; that colony having never been able or 
willing to take upon itself the expense of its proper government 
or its own appropriated jobs. 

The province of Nova Scotia was the youngest and the fa- 
vourite child of the Board. Good God! what sums the nursing 
of that ill-thriven, hard-visaged, and ill-favoured brat has cost 






102 BURKE. 

to this wittol 8 nation ! Sir, this colony has stood us in a sum of 
not less than seven hundred thousand pounds. To this day it 
has made no repayment, — it does not even support those offices 
of expense which are miscalled its government : the whole 
of that job still lies upon the patient, callous shoulders of the 
people of England. 

Sir, I am going to state a fact to you that will serve to set in 
full sunshine the real value of formality and official superin- 
tendence. There was in the province of Nova Scotia one little 
neglected corner, the country of the neutral French; 9 which, 
having the good-fortune to escape the fostering care of both 
France and England, and to have been shut out from the pro- 
tection and regulation of councils of commerce and of boards of 
trade, did, in silence, without notice, and without assistance, 
increase to a considerable degree. But it seems our nation had 
more skill and ability in destroying than in settling a colony. 
In the last war, we did, in my opinion, most inhumanly, and 
upon pretences that in the eye of an honest man are not worth 
a farthing, root out this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom 
our utter inability to govern, or to reconcile, gave us no sort of 
right to extirpate. Whatever the merits of that extirpation 
might have been, it was on the footsteps of a neglected people, 
it was on the fund of unconstrained poverty, it was on the ac- 
quisitions of unregulated industry, that any thing which de- 
serves the name of a colony in that province has been formed. 
It has been formed by overflowings from the exuberant popula- 
tion of New England, and by emigration from other parts of 
Nova Scotia of fugitives from the protection of the Board of 
Trade. 

But if all these things were not more than sufficient to prove 
to you the inutility of that expensive establishment, I would 
desire you to recollect, Sir, that those who may be very ready 
to defend it are very cautious how they employ it, — cautious 
how they employ it even in appearance and pretence. They 
are afraid they should lose the benefit of its influence in Parlia- 
ment, if they seemed to keep it up for any other purpose. If 
ever there were commercial points of great weight, and most 
closely connected with our dependencies, they are those which 
have been agitated and decided in Parliament since I came into 
it. Which of the innumerable regulations since made had their 
origin or their improvement in the Board of Trade ? Did any 

8 A wittol is, properly, a husband dishonoured in his home, and knowing 
himself to be so, yet tamely putting up with it. 

9 Acadia hi, I suppose, tho province referred to; well known to readers of 
poetry as the scene of Longfellow's Evangeline. Acadia, however, or Acadie, is 
merely the old French name of Nova Scotia. 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM - . 103 

of the several East India bills which have been successively 
produced since 1767 originate there ? Did any one dream of re- 
ferring them, or any part of them, thither ? Was anybody so 
ridiculous as even to think of it ? If ever there was an occasion 
on which the Board was fit to be consulted, it was with regard 
to the Acts that were preludes to the American war, or attend- 
ant on its commencement. Those Acts were full of commercial 
regulations, such as they were : the Intercourse Bill ; the Pro- 
hibitory Bill ; the Fishery Bill. If the Board was not concerned 
in such things, in what particular was it thought fit that it 
should be concerned ? In the course of all these bills through 
the House, I observed the members of that Board to be remark- 
ably cautious of intermeddling. They understood decorum 
better ; they know that matters of trade and plantations are no 
business of theirs. 

There were two very recent occasions, which, if the idea of 
any use for the Board had not been extinguished by prescrip- 
tion, appeared loudly to call for their interference. 

When commissioners were sent to pay his Majesty's and our 
dutiful respects to the Congress of the United States, a part of 
their powers under the commission were, it seems, of a com- 
mercial nature. They were authorized, in the most ample and 
undefined manner, to form a commercial treaty with America 
on the spot. This was no trivial object. As the formation of 
such a treaty would necessarily have been no less than the 
breaking up of our whole commercial system, and the giving it 
an entire new form, one would imagine that the Board of Trade 
would have sat day and night to model propositions, which, on 
our side, might serve as a basis to that treaty. No such thing. 
Their learned leisure was not in the least interrupted, though 
one of the members of the Board was a commissioner, and 
might, in mere compliment to his office, have been supposed to 
make a show of deliberation on the subject. But he knew that 
his colleagues would have thought he laughed in their faces, 
had he attempted to bring any thing the most distantly relating 
to commerce or colonies before them. A noble person, engaged 
in the same commission, and sent to learn his commercial 
rudiments in New York, (then under the operation of an Act 
for the universal prohibition of trade,) was soon after put at 
the head of that Board. This contempt from the present 
Ministers of all the pretended functions of that Board, and 
their manner of breathing into it its very soul, of inspiring it 
with its animating and presiding principle, puts an end to all 
dispute concerning their opinion of the clay it was made of. 
But I will give them heaped measure. 

It was but the other day, that the noble lord in the blue 



104 BURKE. 

riband carried up to the House of Peers two Acts, altering, I 
think much for the better, but altering in a great degree, our 
whole commercial system : those Acts, I mean, for giving a 
free trade to Ireland in woollens, and in all things else, with 
independent nations, and giving them an equal trade to our 
own colonies. Here, too, the novelty of this great, but arduous 
and critical improvement of system, would make you conceive 
that the anxious solicitude of the noble lord in the blue riband 
would have wholly destroyed the plan of summer recreation 
of that Board, by references to examine, compare, and digest 
matters for Parliament. You would imagine that Irish com- 
missioners of customs, and English commissioners of customs, 
and commissioners of excise, that merchants and manufacturers 
of every denomination, had daily crowded their outer rooms. 
Nil horum. The perpetual virtual adjournment, and the un- 
broken sitting vacation of that Board, was no more disturbed by 
the Irish than by the plantation commerce, or any other com- 
merce. The same matter made a large part of the business 
which occupied the House for two sessions before ; and as our 
Ministers were not then mellowed by the mild, emollient, and 
engaging blandishments of our dear sister 1 into all the tender- 
ness of unqualified surrender, the bounds and limits of a re- 
strained benefit naturally required much detailed management 
and positive regulation. But neither the qualified propositions 
which were received, nor those other qualified propositions 
which were rejected by Ministers, were the least concern of 
theirs, nor were they ever thought of in the business. 

It is therefore, Sir, on the opinion of Parliament, on the opin- 
ion of the Ministers, and even on their own opinion of their 
inutility, that I shall propose to you to suppress the Board of 
Trade and Plantations, and to recommit all its business to the 
Council, from whence it was very improvidently taken ; where 
that business (whatever it might be) was much better done, 
and without any expense ; and indeed where in effect it may all 
come at last. Almost all that deserves the name of business 
there is the reference of the plantation Acts to the opinion of 
gentlemen of the law. But all this may be done, as the Irish 
business of the same nature has always been done, by the 
Council, and with a reference to the Attorney and Solicitor 
General. 

There are some regulations in the household, relative to the 
officers of the yeomen of the guards, and the officers and band 

1 Ireland is the " dear sister" meant, and the "blandishments " she had used 
were open revolt, a whirlwind of public commotion, the people demanding re- 
lief with arms in their hands. The matter is fully discussed iu Burke's Speech 
to the Electors of Bristol, 




SPEECH ON" ECONOMICAL EEFORM. 



105 



of gentlemen pensioners, which I shall likewise submit to your 
consideration, for the purpose of regulating establishments 
which at present are much abused. 

I have now finished all that for the present I shall trouble 
you with on the plan of reduction. I mean next to propose to 
you the plan of arrangement, by which I mean to appropriate 
and fix the civil-list money to its several services according to 
their nature : for I am thoroughly sensible that, if a discretion 
wholly arbitrary can be exercised over the civil-list revenue, 
although the most effectual methods may be taken to prevent 
the inferior departments from exceeding their bounds, the plan 
of reformation will still be left very imperfect. It will not, in 
my opinion, be safe to admit an entirely arbitrary discretion 
even in the First Lord of the Treasury himself ; it will not be 
safe to leave with him a power of diverting the public money 
from its proper objects, of paying it in an irregular course, or of 
inverting perhaps the order of time, dictated by the proportion 
of value, which ought to regulate his application of payment to 
service. 

I am sensible, too, that the very operation of a plan of econo- 
my which tends to exonerate the civil list of expensive estab- 
lishments may in some sort defeat the capital end we have in 
view, — the independence of Parliament; and that, in removing 
the public and ostensible means of influence, we may increase 
the fund of private corruption. I have thought of some meth- 
ods to prevent an abuse of surplus cash under discretionary 
application, — I mean the heads of secret service, special service, 
various payments, and the like, — which I hope will answer, and 
which in due time I shall lay before you. Where I am unable 
to limit the quantity of the sums to be applied, by reason of the 
uncertain quantity of the service, I endeavour to confine it to 
its line, to secure an indefinite application to the definite service 
to which it belongs, — not to stop the progress of expense in its 
line, but to confine it to that line in which it professes to move. 

But that part of my plan, Sir, upon which I principally rest, 
that on which I rely for the purpose of binding up and securing 
the whole, is to establish a fixed and invariable order in all its 
payments, which it shall not be permitted to the First Lord of 
the Treasury, upon any pretence whatsoever, to depart from. 
I therefore divide the civil-list payments into nine classes, put- 
ting each class forward according to the importance or justice 
of the demand, and to the inability of the persons entitled to 
enforce their pretensions : that is, to put those first who have 
the most efficient offices, or claim the justest debts, and at the 
same time, from the character of that description of men, from 
the retiredness or the remoteness of their situation, or from 



106 BTJEKK 

their want of weight and power to enforce their pretensions, or 
from their being entirely subject to the power of a Minister, 
without any reciprocal power of awing, ought to be the most 
considered, and are the most likely to be neglected, — all these I 
place in the highest classes : I place in the lowest those whose 
functions are of the least importance, but whose persons or 
rank are often of the greatest power and influence. 

In the first class I place the judges, as of the first importance. 
It is the public justice that holds the community together ; the 
ease, therefore, and independence of the judges ought to super- 
sede all other considerations, and they ought to be the very 
last to feel the necessities of the State, or to be obliged either 
to court or bully a Minister for their rights ; they ought to be 
as weak solicitors on their own demands as strenuous assertors of 
the rights and liberties of others. The judges are, or ought to 
be, of a reserved and retired character, and wholly unconnected 
with the political world. 

In the second class I place the foreign ministers. The judges 
are the links of our connections with one another ; the foreign 
ministers are the links of our connection with other nations. 
They are not upon the spot to demand payment, and are there- 
fore the most likely to be, as in fact they have sometimes been, 
entirely neglected, to the great disgrace and perhaps the great 
detriment of the nation. 

In the third class I would bring all the tradesmen who supply 
the Crown by contract or otherwise. 

In the fourth class I place all the domestic servants of the 
King, and all persons in efficient offices whose salaries do not 
exceed two hundred pounds a-year. 

In the fifth, upon account of honour, which ought to give 
place to nothing but charity and rigid justice, I would place the 
pensions and allowances of his Majesty's royal family, compre- 
hending of course the Queen, together with the stated allow- 
ance of the privy purse. 

In the sixth class I place those efficient offices of duty whose 
salaries may exceed the sum of two hundred pounds a-year. 

In the seventh class, that mixed mass, the whole pension list. 

In the eighth, the offices of honour about the King. 

In the ninth, and the last of all, the salaries and pensions of 
the First Lord of the Treasury himself, the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, and the other Commissioners of the Treasury. 

If, by any possible mismanagement of that part of the revenue 
which is left at discretion, or by any other mode of prodigality, 
cash should be deficient for the payment of the lowest classes, 
I propose that the amount of those salaries where the deficiency 
may happen to fall shall not be carried as debt to the account 



SPEECH OX ECOtfOillCAL EEFORM. 107 

of the succeeding year, but that it shall be entirely lapsed, 
sunk, and lost ; so that government will be enabled to start in 
the race of every new year wholly unloaded, fresh in wind and 
vigour. Hereafter no civil-list debt can ever come upon the 
public. And these who do not consider this as saving, because 
it is not a certain sum, do not ground their calculations of the 
future on their experience of the past. 

I know of no mode of preserving the effectual execution of 
any duty, but to make it the direct interest of the executive offi- 
cer that it shall be faithfully performed. Assuming, then, that 
the present vast allowance to the civil list is perfectly adequate 
to all its purposes, if there should.be any failure, it must be 
from the mismanagement or neglect of the First Commissioner 
of the Treasury ; since, upon the proposed plan, there can be no 
expense of any consequence which he is not himself previously 
to authorize and finally to control. It is therefore just, as well 
as politic, that the loss should attach upon the delinquency. 

If the failure from the delinquency should be very consider- 
able, it will fall on the class directly above the First Lord of 
the Treasury, as well as upon himself and his board. It will 
fall, as it ought to fall, upon offices of no primary importance in 
the State ; but then it will fall upon persons whom it will be 
a matter of no slight importance for a Minister to provoke : it 
will fall upon persons of the first rank and consequence in the 
kingdom, — upon those who are nearest to the King, and fre- 
quently have a more interior credit with him than the Minister 
himself. It will fall upon masters of the horse, upon lord 
chamberlains, upon lord stewards, upon grooms of the stole, 
and lords of the bedchamber. The household troops form an 
army, who will be ready to mutiny for want of pay, and whose 
mutiny will be really dreadful to a commander-in-chief. A 
rebellion of the thirteen lords of the bedchamber would be far 
more terrible to a Minister, and would probably affect his power 
more to the quick, than a revolt of thirteen colonies. What an 
uproar such an event would create at Court ! What petitions, 
and committees, and associations, would it not produce ! Bless 
me ! what a clattering of white sticks and yellow sticks would 
be about his head 1 what a storm of gold keys would fly about 
the ears of the Minister ! what a shower of Georges, and 
thistles, and medals, and collars of esses 2 would assail him at 
his first entrance into the antechamber, after an insolvent 
Christmas quarter ! — a tumult which could not be appeased by 
all the harmony of the new year's ode. Rebellion it is certain 

2 Collars of esses are said to be so called, from the links of the chain-work be- 
ing shaped like the letter S. 



108 BUKKE. 






there would be ; and rebellion may not now indeed be so criti- 
cal an event to those who engage in it, since its price is so cor- 
rectly ascertained at just a thousand pounds. 

Sir, this classing, in my opinion, is a serious and solid security 
for the performance of a Minister's duty. Lord Coke says that 
the staff was put into the Treasurer's hand to enable him to 
support himself when there was no money in the Exchequer, 
and to beat away importunate solicitors. The method which I 
propose would hinder him from the necessity of such a broken 
staff to lean on, or such a miserable weapon for repulsing the 
demands of worthless suitors, who, the noble lord in the blue 
riband knows, will bear many hard blows on the head, and many 
other indignities, before they are driven from the Treasury. In 
this plan, he is furnished with an answer to all their importu- 
nity, — an answer far more conclusive than if he had knocked 
them down with his staff : "Sir, (or my Lord,) you are. calling 
for my own salary, — Sir, you are calling for the appointments 
of my colleagues who sit about me in office, — Sir, you are going 
to excite a mutiny at Court against me, — you are going to 
estrange his Majesty's confidence from me, through the cham- 
berlain, or the master of the horse, or the groom of the s'tole." 

As things now stand, every man, in proportion to his conse- 
quence at Court, tends to add to the expenses of the civil list, 
by all manner of jobs, if not for himself, yet for his dependents. 
"When the new plan is established, those who are now suitors 
for jobs will become the most strenuous opposers of them. 
They will have a common interest with the Minister in public 
economy. Every class, as it stands low, will become security 
for the payment of the preceding class ; and thus the persons 
whose insignificant services defraud those that are useful 
would then become interested in their payment. Then the 
powerful, instead of oppressing, would be obliged to support 
the weak ; and idleness would become concerned in the reward 
of industry. The whole fabric of the civil economy would 
become compact and connected in all its parts ; it would be 
formed into a well-organized body, where every member con- 
tributes to the support of the whole, and where even the lazy 
stomach secures the vigour of the active arm. 

This plan, I really flatter myself, is laid not in official for- 
mality, nor in airy speculation, but in real life, and in human 
nature, in what "comes home" (as Bacon says) "to the busi- 
ness and bosoms of men." You have now, Sir, before you, the 
whole of my scheme, as far as I have digested it into a form 
that might be in any respect worthy of your consideration. I 
intend to lay it before you in five bills. The plan consists, 
indeed, of many parts ; but they stand upon a few plain princi- 



SPEECH 01* ECONOMICAL REFORM. 109 

pies. It is a plan which takes nothing from the civil list with- 
out discharging it of a burden equal to the sura carried to the 
public service. It weakens no one function necessary to gov- 
ernment; but, on the contrary, by appropriating supply to 
service, it gives it greater vigour. It provides the means of 
order and foresight to a minister of finance, which may always 
keep all the objects of his office, and their state, condition, and 
relations, distinctly before him. It brings forward accounts 
without harrying and distressing the accountants : whilst it 
provides for public convenience, it regards private rights. It 
extinguishes secret corruption almost to the possibility of its 
existence. It destroys direct and visible influence equal to the 
offices of at least fifty members of Parliament. Lastly, it 
prevents the provision for his Majesty's children from being 
diverted to the political purposes of his Minister. 

These are the points on which I rely for the merit of the 
plan. I pursue economy in a secondary view, and only as it is 
connected with these great objects. I am persuaded, that even 
for supply this scheme will be far from unfruitful, if it be exe- 
cuted to the extent I propose it. I think it will give to the 
public, at its periods, two or three hundred thousand pounds a 
year ; if not, it will give them a system of economy, which is 
itself a great revenue. It gives me no little pride and satisfac- 
tion to find that the principles of my proceedings are in many 
respects the very same with those which are now pursued in 
the plans of the French minister of finance. I am sure that I 
lay before you a scheme easy and practicable in all its parts. I 
know it is common at once to applaud and to reject all attempts 
of this nature. I know it is common for men to say that such 
and such things are perfectly right, very desirable, — but that, 
unfortunately, they are not practicable. O, no, Sir, ! no ! 
Those things which are not practicable are not desirable. 
There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not 
lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well- 
directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good 
for us that He has not given us means to accomplish, both in 
the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children, for 
the Moon, like children we must cry on. 

We must follow the nature of our affairs, and conform our- 
selves to our situation. If we do, our objects are plain and 
compassable. Why should we resolve to do nothing, because 
what I propose to you may not be the exact demand of the 
petition, when we are far from resolved to comply even with 
what evidently is so ? Does this sort of chicanery become us ? 
The people are the masters. They have only to express their 
wants at large and in gross. We are the expert artists, we are 



110 BURKE. 

the skillful workmen, to shape their desires into perfect form, 
and to fit the utensil to the use. They are the sufferers, they 
tell the symptoms of the complaint ; but we know the exact 
seat of the disease, and how to apply the remedy according to 
the rules of art. How shocking would it be to see us pervert 
our skill into a sinister and servile dexterity, for the purpose 
of evading our duty, and defrauding our employers, who are 
our natural lords, of the object of their just expectations ! I 
think the whole not only practicable, but practicable in a very 
short time. If we are in earnest about it, and if we exert that 
industry and those talents in forwarding the work which, I am 
afraid, may be exerted in impeding it, I engage that the whole 
may be put in complete execution within a year. For my own 
part, I have very little to recommend me for this or for any 
task, but a kind of earnest and anxious perseverance of mind, 
which, with all its good and all its evil effects, is moulded into 
my constitution. I faithfully engage to the House, if they 
choose to appoint me to any part in the execution of this work, 
(which, when they have made it theirs by the improvements of 
their wisdom, will be worthy of the able assistance they may 
give me,) that by night and by day, in town or in country, at 
the desk or in the forest, I will, without regard to convenience, 
ease, or pleasure, devote myself to their service, not expecting 
or admitting any reward whatsoever. I owe to this country my 
labour, which is my all ; and I owe to it ten times more indus- 
try, if ten times more I could exert. After all, I shall be an 
unprofitable servant. 

At the same time, if I am able, and if I shall be permitted, 
I will lend an humble helping hand to any other good work 
which is going on. I have not, Sir, the frantic presumption to 
suppose that this plan contains in it the whole of what the 
public has a right to expect in the great work of reformation 
they call for. Indeed, it falls infinitely short of it. It falls 
short even of my own ideas. I have some thoughts, not yet 
fully ripened, relative to a reform in the customs and excise, 
as well as in some other branches of financial administration. 
There are other things, too, which form essential parts in a 
great plan for the purpose of restoring the independence of 
Parliament. The contractors' bill of last year it is fit to revive ; 
and I rejoice that it is in better hands than mine. The bill for 
suspending the votes of custom-house officers, brought into 
Parliament several years ago by one of our worthiest and 
wisest members, 3 — would to God we could along with the plan 
revive the person who designed it ! — but a man of very real 

3 This was William Dowdeswell, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1765. See 
page 42, note 9. 



SPEECH OK ECONOMICAL REFORM. Ill 

integrity, honour, and ability will be found to take his place, 
and to carry his idea into full execution. You all see how 
necessary it is to review our military expenses for some years 
past, and, if possible, to bind up and close that bleeding artery 
of profusion ; but that business also, I have reason to hope, 
will be undertaken by abilities that are fully adequate to it. 
Something must be devised (if possible) to check the ruinous 
expense of elections. 

Sir, all or most of these things must be done. Every one 
must take his part. If we should be able, by dexterity, or 
power, or intrigue, to disappoint the expectations of our con- 
stituents, what will it avail us ? We shall never be strong or 
artful enough to parry, or to put by, the irresistible demands of 
our situation. That situation calls upon us, and upon our con- 
stituents too, with a voice which will be heard. I am sure no 
man is more zealously attached than I am to the privileges of 
this House, particularly in regard to the exclusive management 
of money. The Lords have no right to the disposition, in any 
sense, of the public purse ; but they have gone further in self- 
denial than our utmost jealousy could have required. A power 
of examining accounts, to censure, correct, and punish, we 
never, that I know of, have thought of denying to the House of 
Lords. It is something more than a century since we voted 
that body useless: they have now voted themselves so. The 
whole hope of reformation is at length cast upon us; and let us 
not deceive the nation, which does us the honour to hope every 
thing from our virtue. If all the nation are not equally forward 
to press this duty upon us, yet be assured that they all equally 
expect we should perform it. The respectful silence of those 
who wait upon your pleasure ought to be as powerful with you 
as the call of those who require your service as their right. 
Some, without doors, affect to feel hurt for your dignity, be- 
cause they suppose that menaces are held out to you. Justify 
their good opinion by showing that no menaces are necessary 
to stimulate you to your duty. But, Sir, whilst we may sympa- 
thize with those in one point who sympathize with us in an- 
other, we ought to attend no less to those who approach us like 
men, and who, in the guise of petitioners, speak to us in the 
tone of a concealed authority. It is not wise to force them to 
speak out more plainly than they plainly mean. — But the peti- 
tioners are violent? Be it so. Those who are least anxious 
about your conduct are not those that love you most. Moderate 
affection and satiated enjoyment are cold and respectful ; but 
an ardent and injured passion is tempered up with wrath, and 
grief, and shame, and conscious worth, and the maddening 
sense of violated right. A jealous love lights his torch from 



112 BUHKE. 

the firebrands of the furies. They who call upon you to belong 
wholly to the people are those who wish you to return to your 
proper home, — to the sphere of your duty, to the post of your 
honour, to the mansion-house of all genuine, serene, and solid 
satisfaction. "We have furnished to the people of England (in- 
deed we have) some real cause of jealousy. Let us leave that 
sort of company which, if it does not destroy our innocence, 
pollutes our honour ; let us free ourselves at once from every 
thing that can increase their suspicions and inflame their just 
resentment ; let us cast away from us, with a generous scorn, 
all the love-tokens and symbols that we have been vain and 
light enough to accept, — all the bracelets, and snuff-boxes, and 
miniature pictures, and hair-devices, and all the other adulterous 
trinkets that are the pledges of our alienation and the monu- 
ments of our shame. Let us return to our legitimate home, and 
all jars and all quarrels will be lost in embraces. Let the Com- 
mons in Parliament assembled be one and the same thing with 
the commons at large. The distinctions that are made to sep- 
arate us are unnatural and wicked contrivances. Let us iden- 
tify, let us incorporate ourselves with the people. Let us cut all 
the cables and snap the chains which tie us to an unfaithful 
shore, and enter the friendly harbour that shoots far out into 
the main its moles and jetties to receive us. "War with the 
world, and peace with our constituents." Be this our motto, 
and our principle. Then indeed we shall be truly great. Re- 
specting ourselves, we shall be respected by the world. At 
present all is troubled, and cloudy, and distracted, and full of 
anger and turbulence, both abroad and at home ; but the air 
may be cleared by this storm, and light and fertility may follow 
it. Let us give a faithful pledge to the people, that we honour 
indeed the Crown, but that we belong to them ; that we are 
their auxiliaries, and not their task-masters, — the fellow- 
labourers in the same vineyard, not lording over their rights, 
but helpers of their joy ; that to tax them is a grievance to our- 
selves, but to cut off from our enjoyments to forward theirs is 
the highest gratification we are capable of receiving. I feel, 
with comfort, that we are all warmed with these sentiments, 
and while we are thus warm, I wish we may go directly and 
with a cheerful heart to this salutary work. 

Sir, I move for leave to bring in a bill, " For the better regu- 
lation of his Majesty's civil establishments, and of certain pub- 
lic offices ; for the limitation of pensions, and the suppression 
of sundry useless, expensive, and inconvenient places, and for 
applying the moneys saved thereby to the public service." * 

4 This motion being seconded by Fox, Lord North thereupon rose and said: 






OBEDIENCE TO INSTRUCTIONS. 113 



OBEDIENCE TO INSTRUCTIONS. 

Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and 
glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the 
closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communica- 
tion with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great 
weight with him; their opinions high respect; their business 
unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his 
pleasure, his satisfactions to theirs, — and, above all, ever, and 
in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. 

But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlight- 
ened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, 
or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from 
your pleasure, — no, nor from the law and the Constitution. 
They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is 
deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his 
industry only, but his judgment ; and he betrays, instead of 
serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. 

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to 
yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were 
a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought 
to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of 
reason and judgment, and not of inclination ; and what sort of 
reason is that in which the determination precedes the discus- 
sion, in which one set of men deliberate and another decide, 

"The speech is one of the ablest I have ever heard, and it is one which, though 
I have had the happiness of knowing many men of very brilliant talents, I be- 
lieve the honourable gentleman only could have made." Gibbon also, the well- 
known historian, then a member of Parliament, and a staunch Tory, afterwards 
wrote as follows : " Never can I forget the delight with which that diffusive and 
ingenious orator, Mr. Burke, was heard, and even by those whose existence he 
proscribed." I must also quote a passage from Macknight's Life and Times of 
Burlce: "For three hours he held his audience under his irresistible spell. 
Ministerialists, courtiers, sycophants, sinecurists, all gave the most complete 
testimony to the oi-ator's success. Tumultuous cheers and roars of laughter 
attended him throughout the course of his speech. At the close of his perora- 
tion, when he called on the Commons in Parliament to be one and the same with 
the commons at large, and entreated them to throw aside the temptations of the 
government and return to their natural home, it almost seemed, from the simul- 
taneous burst of enthusiasm from all quarters, that there were not nearly a hun- 
dred ministerial retainers, whose political aspirations extended only to the 
receipt of their next quarter's salaries." — On the whole, this mighty speech may 
be safely pronounced the finest piece of parliamentary eloquence in the lan- 
guage, or perhaps in the woi'ld. Nevertheless the stolid strength of the King's 
phalanx in the House proved too much for Burke. The measure was not car- 
ried till more than two years later, when Burke himself was in office under 
Lord Rockingham. 



114 BURKE. 

and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three 
hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments? 

To deliver an opinion is the right of all men ; that of constitu- 
ents is a weighty, and respectable opinion, which a representa- 
tive ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought always 
most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions, man- 
dates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly 
to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clear- 
est conviction of his judgment and conscience, — these are 
things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which 
arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and 
tenour of our Constitution. 

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different 
and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an 
agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but 
Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one in- 
terest, that of the whole, — where not local purposes, not local 
prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from 
the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, in- 
deed ; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of 
Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament. If the local constit- 
uent should have an interest or should form an hasty opinion 
evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the commu- 
nity, the member from that place ought to be as far as any 
other from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for 
saying so much on this subject ; I have been unwillingly drawn 
into it ; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communi- 
cation with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I 
shall be to the end of my life : a flatterer you do not wish for. 
On this point of instructions, however, I think it scarcely possi- 
ble we ever can have any sort of difference. Perhaps I may 
give you too much, rather than too little trouble. 

Prom the first hour I was encouraged to court your favour, to 
this happy day of obtaining it, I have never promised you any 
thing but humble and persevering endeavours to do my duty. 
The weight of that duty, I confess, makes me tremble ; and 
whoever well considers what it is, of all things in the world, 
will fly from what has the least likeness to a positive and pre- 
cipitate engagement. To be a good member of Parliament is, 
let me tell you, no easy task,-™ especially at this time, when 
there is so strong a disposition to run into the j)erilous extremes 
of servile compliance or wild popularity. To unite circumspec- 
tion with vigour is absolutely necessary, but it is extremely 
difficult. We are now members for a inch commercial city ; this 
city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial nation, the in- 
terests of which are various, multiform, and intricate. We 



i are 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 



115 



members for that great nation, which, however, is itself but 
part of a great empire, extended by our virtue and our fortune 
to the farthest limits of the Ealt and of the West. All these 
wide-spread interests must be considered,— must be compared, 
— must be reconciled, if possible. We are members for a free 
country ; and surely we all know that the machine of a free 
constitution is no simple thing, but as intricate and as delicate 
as it is valuable. We are members in a great and ancient mon- 
archy; and we must preserve religiously the true, legal rights 
of the sovereign, which form the keystone that binds together 
the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our Con- 
stitution. A constitution made up of balanced powers must 
ever be a critical thing. As such I mean to touch that part ef 
it which comes within my reach. I know my inability, and I 
wish for support from every quarter. In particular I shall aim 
at the friendship, and shall cultivate the best correspondence, 
of the worthy colleague you have given me. — Speech after the 
election at Bristol, 1774. 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOKS OF BKISTOL. 5 



Mr. Mayor, and Gentlemen: I am extremely pleased at 
the appearance of this large and respectable meeting. The 
steps I may be obliged to take will want the sanction of a con- 
siderable authority ; and in explaining any thing which may 
appear doubtful in my public conduct, I must naturally desire 
a very full audience. 

I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolution 
of the Parliament was uncertain ; and it did not become me, by 
an unseasonable importunity, to appear diffident of the effect of 
my six years' endeavours to please you. I had served the city 
of Bristol honourably, and the city of Bristol had no reason to 
think that the means of honourable service to the public were 
become indifferent to me. 

I found, on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had been 
long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us can ob- 
tain. I found that they had all met with encouragement. A 
contested election in such a city as this is no light thing. I 
paused on the brink of the precipice. These three gentlemen, 

5 This speech was delivered September 6, 1780. Its full title as given in the 
printed copy is, " Speech at the Guildhall in Bristol, previous to the late Election 
in that City, upon certain Points relative to his Parliamentary Conduct. 1780." 
Why it was made will appear sufficiently from the body of the speech itself. 



116 BURKE. 

by various merits, and on various titles, I made no doubt were 
worthy of your favour. I shall never attempt to raise myself 
by depreciating the merits of my competitors. In the complex- 
ity and confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the 
authentic public sense of my friends upon a business of so much 
delicacy. I wished to take your opinion along with me, that, if 
I should give up the contest at the very beginning, my surren- 
der of my post may not seem the effect of inconstancy, or tim- 
idity, or anger, or disgust, or indolence, or any other temper 
unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public service. If, 
on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of 
success, I was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the 
whole world that the peace of the city had not been broken by 
my rashness, presumption, or fond conceit of my own merit. 

I am not come, by a false and counterfeit show of deference 
to your judgment, to seduce it in my favour. I ask it seriously 
and unaffectedly. If you wish that I should retire, I shall not 
consider that advice as a censure upon my conduct, or an alter- 
ation in your sentiments, but as a rational submission to the 
circumstances of affairs. If, on the contrary, you should think 
it proper for me to proceed in my canvass, if you will risk the 
trouble on your part, I will risk it on mine. My pretensions 
are such as you cannot be ashamed of, whether they succeed or 
fail. 

If you call upon me, I shall solicit the favour of the city upon 
manly ground. I come before you with the plain confidence of 
an honest servant in the equity of a candid and discerning mas- 
ter. I come to claim your approbation, not to amuse you with 
vain apologies, or with professions still more vain and senseless. 
I have lived too long to be served by apologies, or to stand in 
need of them. The part I have acted has been in open day ; 
and to hold out to a conduct which stands in that clear and 
steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that 
conduct the paltry, winking tapers of excuses and promises, — I 
never will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but 
they never can illumine sunshine by such a flame as theirs. 

I am sensible that no endeavours have been left untried to 
injure me in your opinion. But the use of character is to be a 
shield against calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly, (if idle 
wishes were not the most idle of all things,) to make every part 
of my conduct agreeable to every one of my constituents ; but 
in so great a city, and so greatly divided as this, it is weak to 
expect it. 6 

6 Burke's course in Parliament, especially on the American question, had 
been so offensive to the bigoted and the interested partisans of government, 
that they had left no stone unturned, to defeat his reelection at Bristol. This he 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOES OF BRISTOL. 



117 



In such a discordancy of sentiments it is better to look to the 
nature of things than to the humours of men. The very at- 
tempt towards pleasing everybody discovers a temper always 
flashy, and often false and insincere. Therefore, as I have 
proceeded straight onward in my conduct, so I will proceed in 
my account of those parts of it which have been most excepted 
to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to you that we may 
suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. 
It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits 
full of activity and full of energy, who are pressing, who are 
rushing forward, to great and capital objects, when you oblige 
them to be continually looking back. Whilst they are defend- 
ing one service, they defraud you of an hundred. Applaud us 
when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we 
recover ; but let us pass on, — for God's sake, let us pass on ! 

Do you think, Gentlemen, that every public act in the six 
years since I stood in this place before you, that all the arduous 
things which have been done in this eventful period which has 
crowded into a few years' space the revolutions of an age, can 
be opened to you on their fair grounds in half an hour's con- 
versation ? 

But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of inquiry, 
that there should be no examination at all. Most certainly it is 
our duty to examine ; it is our interest too : but it must be with 
discretion, with an attention to all the circumstances and to all 
the motives ; like sound judges, and not like cavilling petti- 
foggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting 
for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the whole tenour of your 
member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice 
have jostled him out of the straight line of duty, — or whether 
that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in 
men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made 
him flag and languish in his course. This is the object of our 
inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it 
for sterling. He may have fallen into errors, he must have 
faults ; but our error is greater, and our fault is radically ruin- 



was himself aware of; but he was built too high in manly honour and self- 
respect to practice any sort of jugglery with the people, or use any demagogic 
craft for the sake of gaining or keeping their favour. Therewithal he regarded 
the issue with the calmness of a philosopher. A short time before the making 
of this speech, he wrote to a prominent citizen of Bristol as follows: "It re- 
mains to be seen whether there be enough of independence among us to support 
a representative Avho throws himself on his own good behaviour, and the good 
dispositions of his constituents, without playing any little game either to bribe 
or to delude them. I shall put this to the proof within a few days. It must 
have a good effect, one way or the other; for it is always of use to know the true 
temper of the time and country one lives in." 



118 BUHKE. 

cms to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do not even applaud, 
the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character. Not 
to act thus is folly ; I had almost said it is impiety. He cen- 
sures God who quarrels with the imperfections of man. 

Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the 
people ; for none will serve us, whilst there is a Court to serve, 
but those who are of a nice and jealous honour. They who 
think every thing, in comparison of that honour, to be dust and 
ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and impaired by those for 
whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to preserve it 
immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from 
the public stage, or we shall send them to the Court for pro- 
tection, where, if they must sacrifice their reputation, they will 
at least secure their interest. Depend upon it, that the lovers 
of freedom will be free. None will violate their conscience to 
please us, in order afterwards to discharge that conscience 
which they have violated, by doing us faithful and affectionate 
service. If we degrade and deprave their minds by servility, 
it will be absurd to expect that they who are creeping and 
abject towards us will ever be bold and incorruptible assertors 
of our freedom against the most seducing and the most formid- 
able of all powers. No ! human nature is not so formed : nor 
shall we improve the faculties or better the morals of public 
men by our possession of the most infallible receipt in the 
Avorld for making cheats and hypocrites. 

Let me say, with plainness, I who am no longer in a public 
character, that if, by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly 
behaviour to our representatives, we do not give confidence to 
their minds and a liberal scope to their understandings, if we 
do not permit our members to act upon a very enlarged view of 
things, we shall at length infallibly degrade our national 
representation into a confused and scuffling bustle of local 
agency. When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas 
and rendered timid in his proceedings, the service of the Crown 
will be the sole nursery of statesmen. Among the frolics of 
the Court, it may at length take that of attending to its busi- 
ness. Then the monopoly of mental power will be added to the 
power of all other kinds it possesses. On the side of the people 
there will be nothing but impotence : for ignorance is impo- 
tence ; narrowness of mind is impotence ; timidity is itself 
impotence, and makes all other qualities that go along with it 
impotent and useless. 

At present it is the plan of the Court to make its servants 
insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humour, 
and should choose their servants on the same principles of 
mere obsequiousness and flexibility and total vacancy or indif- 






SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 119 

ference of opinion in all public matters, then no part of the 
State will be sound, and it will be in vain to think of saving it. 

I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this can- 
did counsel ; and with this counsel I would willingly close, if 
the matters which at various times have been objected to me in 
this city concerned only myself and my own election. These 
charges, I think, are four in number : my neglect of a due 
attention to my constituents, — the not paying more frequent 
visits here ; my conduct on the affairs of the first Irish Trade 
Acts ; my opinion and mode of proceeding on Lord Beau- 
champ's Debtors' Bills ; and my votes on the late affairs of the 
Roman Catholics. All of these (except perhaps the first) relate 
to matters of very considerable public concern ; and it is not 
lest you should censure me improperly, but lest you should 
form improper opinions on matters of some moment to you, that 
I trouble you at all upon the subject. My conduct is of small 
importance. 

With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to me 
of it in the style of amicable expostulation,— not so much 
blaming the thing as lamenting the effects. Others, less partial 
to me, were less kind in assigning the motives. I admit, there 
is a decorum and propriety in a member of Parliament's paying 
a respectful court to his constituents. If I were conscious to 
myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or low, unworthy occupa- 
tions had detained me from personal attendance on you, I 
would readily admit my fault, and quietly submit to the pen- 
alty. But, Gentlemen, I live at an hundred miles' distance 
from Bristol ; and at the end of a session I come to my own 
house, fatigued in body and in mind, to a little repose, and to 
a very little attention to my family and my private concerns. 
A visit to Bristol is always a sort of canvass, else it will do 
more harm than good. To pass from the toils of a session to 
the toils of a canvass is the farthest thing in the world from 
repose. I could hardly serve you as I have done, and court you 
too. Most of you have heard that I do not very remarkably 
spare myself in public business ; and in the private business 
of my constituents I have done very near as much as those 
who have nothing else to do. My canvass of you was not on 
the 'change, nor in the county meetings, nor in the clubs of 
this city : it was in the House of Commons ; it was at the Cus- 
tom-House ; it was at the Council ; it was at the Treasury ; 
it was at the Admiralty. I canvassed you through your affairs, 
and not your persons. I was not only your representative as a 
body ; I was the agent, the solicitor of individuals ; I ran 
about wherever your affairs could call me ; and in acting for 
you I often appeared rather as a ship-broker than as a member 



120 BURKE. 

of Parliament. There was nothing too laborious or too low for 
me to undertake. The meanness of the business was raised by 
the dignity of the object. If some lesser matters have slipped 
through my fingers, it was because I filled my hands too full, 
and, in my eagerness to serve you, took in more than any hands 
could grasp. Several gentlemen stand round me who are my 
willing witnesses ; and there are others who, if they were here, 
would be still better, because they would be unwilling wit- 
nesses to the same truth. It was in the middle of a summer 
residence in London, and in the middle of a negotiation at the 
Admiralty for your trade, that I was called to Bristol ; and 
this late visit, at this late day, has been possibly in prejudice 
to your affairs. 

Since I have touched upon this matter, let me say, Gentle- 
men, that, if I had a disposition or a right to complain, I have 
some cause of complaint on my side. With a petition of this 
city in my hand, passed through the corporation without a dis- 
senting voice, a petition in unison with almost the whole voice 
of the kingdom, (with whose formal thanks I was covered over,) 
whilst I laboured on no less than five bills for a public reform, 
and fought, against the opposition of great abilities and of the 
greatest power, every clause and every word of the largest of 
those bills, almost to the very last day of a very long session, 7 — 
all this time a canvass in Bristol was as calmly carried on as if I 
were dead. I was considered as a man wholly out of the ques- 
tion. Whilst I watched and fasted and sweated in the House 
of Commons, by the most easy and ordinary arts of election, by 
dinners and visits, by "How do you do's," and, "My worthy 
friends," I was to be quietly moved out of my seat ; and prom- 
ises were made, and engagements entered into, without any ex- 
ception or reserve, as if my laborious zeal in my duty had been 
a regular abdication of my trust. 

To open my whole heart to you on this subject, I do confess, 
however, that there were other times, besides the two years in 
which I did visit you, when I was not wholly without leisure for 
repeating that mark of my respect. But I could not bring my 
mind to see you. You remember that in the beginning of this 
American war (that era of calamity, disgrace, and downfall, an 
era which no feeling mind will ever mention without a tear for 
England) you were greatly divided ; and a very strong body, if 
not the strongest, opposed itself to the madness which every 
art and every power were employed to render popular, in order 
that the errors of the rulers might be lost in the general blind- 

7 The reference here is to the speaker's labours in behalf of economical re- 
form. What these were, is partly shown in the preceding speech. 






SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 121 

ness of the nation. This opposition continued until after our 
great, but most unfortunate victory at Long Island. Then all 
the mounds and banks of our constancy were borne down at 
once, and the frenzy of the American war broke in upon us like 
a deluge. This victory, which seemed to put an immediate end 
to all difficulties, perfected us in that spirit of domination which 
our unparalleled prosperity had but too long nurtured. We 
had been so very powerful, and so very prosperous, that even 
the humblest of us were degraded into the vices and follies of 
kings. We lost all measure between means and ends ; and our 
headlong desires became our politics and our morals. All men 
who wished for peace, or retained any sentiments of modera- 
tion, were overborne or silenced; and this city was led by 
every artifice (and probably with the more management because 
I was one of your members) to distinguish itself by its zeal for 
that fatal cause. In this temper of yours and of my mind, I 
should sooner have fled to the extremities of the Earth than 
have shown myself here. I, who saw in every American victory 
(for you have had a long series of these misfortunes) the germ 
and seed of the naval power of France and Spain, which all our 
heat and warmth against America was only hatching into life, — 
I should not have been a welcome visitant, with the brow and 
the language of such feelings. When, afterwards, the other 
face of your calamity was turned upon you, and showed itself 
in defeat and distress, I shunned you full as much. I felt 
sorely this variety in our wretchedness ; and I did not wish to 
have the least appearance of insulting you with that show of 
superiority which, though it may not be assumed, is generally 
suspected, in a time of calamity, from those whose previous 
warnings have been despised. I could not bear to show you a 
representative whose face did not reflect that of his constitu- 
ents, — a face that could not joy in your joys, and sorrow in 
your sorrows. But time at length has made us all of one opin- 
ion, and we have all opened our eyes on the true nature of the 
American Avar, — to the true nature of all its successes and all 
its failures. 

In that public storm, too, I had my private feelings. I had 
seen blown down and prostrate on the ground several of those 
houses to whom I was chiefly indebted for the honour this city 
has done me. 8 I confess that, whilst the wounds of those I 
loved were yet green, I could not bear to show myself in pride 
and triumph in that place into which their partiality had 
brought me, and to appear at feasts and rejoicings in the midst 

8 Bristol was then the centre of a large American trade, and was thus held 
to the side of the colonics by the strong tie of commercial interest. Of course 
the business of the place suffered greatly from the stoppage of trade by the war. 



122 BU11KE. 

of the grief and calamity of my warm friends, my zealous sup- 
porters, my generous benefactors. This is a true, unvarnished, 
undisguised state of the affair. You will judge of it. 

This is the only one of the charges in which I am personally 
concerned. As to the other matters objected against me, which 
in their turn I shall mention to you, remember once more I do 
not mean to extenuate or excuse. Why should I, when the 
things charged are among those upon which I found all my 
reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the 
man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all 
the distinguishing colours of my life, so as to leave nothing dis- 
tinct and determinate in my whole conduct ? 

It has been said, and it is the second charge, that in the ques- 
tions of the Irish trade I did not consult the interest of my con- 
stituents,— «>or, to speak out strongly, that I rather acted as a 
native of Ireland than as an English member of Parliament. 

I certainly have very warm good wishes for the place of my 
birth. But the sphere of my duties is my true country. It was 
as a man attached to your interests, and zealous for the con- 
servation of your power and dignity, that I acted on that occa- 
sion, and on all occasions. You were involved in the American 
war. A new world of policy was opened, to which it was neces- 
sary we should conform, whether we would or not ; and my 
only thought was how to conform to our situation in such a 
manner as to unite to this kingdom, in prosperity and in affec- 
tion, whatever remained of the empire. I was true to my old, 
standing, invariable principle, that all things which came from 
Great Britain should issue as a gift of her bounty and benefi- 
cence, rather than as claims recovered against a struggling 
litigant ; or, at least, that if your beneficence obtained no 
credit in your concessions, yet that they should appear the 
salutary provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things 
wrung from you with your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid 
necessity. The first concessions, by being (much against my 
will) mangled and stripped of the parts which were necessary to 
make out their just correspondence and connection in trade, 
were of no use. The next year a feeble attempt was made to 
bring the thing into better shape. This attempt, (countenanced 
by the Minister,) on the very first appearance of some popular 
uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the 
House, thrown out by Mm. 

What was the consequence? The whole kingdom of Ireland 
was instantly in a flame. Threatened by foreigners, and, as 
they thought, insulted by England, they resolved at once to 
resist the power of France and to cast off yours. As for us, 
we were able neither to protect nor to restrain them. Eorty 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 123 

thousand men were raised and disciplined without commission 
from the Crown. Two illegal armies were seen with banners 
displayed at the same time and in the same country. No exec- 
utive magistrate, no judicature, in Ireland, would acknowledge 
the legality of the army which bore the King's commission ; 
and no law, or appearance of law, authorized the army commis- 
sioned by itself. In this unexampled state of things, which the 
least error, the least trespass on the right or left, would have 
hurried down the precipice into an abyss of blood and confu- 
sion, the people of Ireland demand a freedom of trade with 
arms in their hands. 9 They interdict all commerce between the 
two nations. They deny all new supply in the House of Com- 
mons, although in time of war. They stint the trust of the old 
revenue, given for two years to all the King's predecessors, to 
six months. The British Parliament, in a former session, 
frightened into a limited concession by the menaces of Ireland, 
frightened out of it by the menaces of England, was now fright- 
ened back again, and made an universal surrender of all that 
had been thought the peculiar, reserved, un communicable 
rights of England: the exclusive commerce of America, of Af- 
rica, of the West Indies, — all the enumerations of the Acts of 
Navigation, — all the manufactures, — iron, glass, even the last 
pledge of jealousy and pride, the interest hid in the secret of 
our hearts, the inveterate prejudice moulded into the constitu- 
tion of our frame, even the sacred fleece itself, all went to- 
gether. No reserve, no exception ; no debate, no discussion. 
A sudden light broke in upon us all. It broke in, not through 
well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws 
and breaches, — through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We 
were taught wisdom by humiliation. No town in England pre- 
sumed to have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a petition. What 
was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained 
authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every 
shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualifica- 
tion, denied in theory, as it had been trampled upon in practice. 
This scene of shame and disgrace has, in a manner, whilst I am 
speaking, ended in the perpetual establishment of a military 
power in the dominions of this Crown, without consent of the 
British legislature, 10 contrary to the policy of the Constitution, 

9 Most of the English people at that time were stiff higots to the notion, that 
the best way to promote their own commercial interests was by oppressing 
those of their neighbours. So, in order to protect English manufactures, they 
insisted on having the importation of Irish manufactures heavily taxed. Burke, 
on the contrary, was all the while a staunch believer in freedom of trade, and 
was the very first to put forth just and liberal ideas on that subject. 

10 The allusion is to what was called the Perpetual Mutiny Act, passed by 



124 ' BURKE. 

contrary to the Declaration of Eight ; l and by this your liber- 
ties are swept away along with your supreme authority ; and 
both, linked together from the beginning, have, I am afraid, 
both together perished for ever. 

What ! Gentlemen, was I not to foresee, or foreseeing, was I 
not to endeavour to save you from all these multiplied mis- 
chiefs and disgraces ? Would the little, silly, canvass prattle of 
obeying instructions, and having no opinions but yours, and 
such idle, senseless tales, which amuse the vacant ears of 
unthinking men, have saved you from "the pelting of that 
pitiless storm" to which the loose improvidence, the cowardly 
rashness, of those who dare not look danger in the face so as to 
provide against it in time, and therefore throw themselves 
headlong into the midst of it, have exposed this degraded 
nation, beat down and prostrate on the earth, unsheltered, 
unarmed, unresisting? Yv r as I an Irishman on that day that 
I boldly withstood our pride ? or on the day that I hung down 
my head, and wept in shame and silence over the humiliation 
of Great Britain ? I became unpopular in England for the one, 
and in Ireland for the other. What then? What obligation 
lay on me to be popular ? I was bound to serve both kingdoms. 
To be pleased with my service was their affair, not mine. 

I was an Irishman in the Irish business, just as much as I 
was an American, when, on the same principles, I wished you 
to concede to America at a time when she prayed concession at 
our feet. Just as much was I an American, when I wished 
Parliament to offer terms in victory, and not to wait the ill- 
chosen hour of defeat, for making good by weakness and by 
supplication a claim of prerogative, preeminence, and authority. 

Instead of requiring it from me, as a point of duty, to kindle 
with your passions, had you all been as cool as I was, you 
would have been saved disgraces and distresses that are un- 
utterable. Do you remember our commission? We sent out 
a solemn embassy across the Atlantic Ocean, to lay the crown, 
the peerage, the commons of Great Britain at the feet of the 
American Congress. That our disgrace might want no sort of 
brightening and burnishing, observe who they were that com- 

the Parliament of Ireland, in order to secure their freedom of trade. The par- 
liamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland, which now exists, did not take 
place till after the death of Burke. 

1 The Declaration of Right, one of the great landmarks of British freedom, 
and ranking along with Magna Charta in the history of English Constitutional 
Law, is the solemn compact or covenant under which, in 1GS8, William and 
Mary took the throne, to the exclusion of James the Second. One of its affirma- 
tions is, that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom, in 
time of peace, unless by consent of Parliament, is illegal. 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 125 

posed this famous embassy. My Lord Carlisle is among the 
first ranks of our nobility. He is the identical man who, but 
two years before, had been put forward, at the opening of a ses- 
sion, in the House of Lords, as the mover of an haughty and rig- 
orous address against America. He was put in the front of the 
embassy of submission. Mr. Eden was taken from the office of 
Lord Suffolk, to whom he was then Under-Secretary of State, — 
from the office of that Lord Suffolk who but a few weeks 
before, in his place in Parliament, did not deign to inquire 
where a congress of vagrants was to be found. This Lord 
Suffolk sent Mr. Eden to find these vagrants, without knowing 
where his King's generals were to be found who were joined in 
the same commission of supplicating those whom they were 
sent to subdue. They enter the capital of America only to 
abandon it; and these assertors and representatives of the 
dignity of England, at the tail of a flying army, let fly their 
Parthian shafts of memorials and remonstrances at random 
behind them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries 
and their menaces, were all despised ; and we were saved the 
disgrace of their formal reception only because the Congress 
scorned to receive them ; whilst the state-house of independent 
Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the am- 
bassador of France. From war and blood we went to submis- 
sion, and from submission plunged back again to war and 
blood, to desolate and be desolated, without measure, hope, or 
end. I am a Royalist : I blushed for this degradation of the 
Crown. I am a Whig : I blushed for the dishonour of Parlia- 
ment. I am a true Englishman : I felt to the quick for the 
disgrace of England. I am a man : I felt for the melancholy 
reverse of human affairs in the fall of the first power in the 
world. 

To read what was approaching in Ireland, in the black and 
bloody characters of the American war, was a painful, but it 
was a necessary part of my imblic duty. For, Gentlemen, it is 
not your fond desires or mine that can alter the nature of 
things ; by contending against which, what have we got, or 
shall ever get, but defeat and shame? I did not obey your 
instructions. !N"o. I conformed to the instructions of truth 
and Nature, and maintained your interest, against your opin- 
ions, with a constancy that became me. A representative 
worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look, 
indeed, to your opinions, — but to such opinions as you and I 
must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of 
the day. I knew that you chose me,' in my place, along with 
others, to be a pillar of the State, and not a weathercock on the 
top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of 



126 BURKE. 

no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. 
"Would to God the value of my sentiments on Ireland and on 
America had been at this day a subject of doubt and discus- 
sion ! ISTo matter what my sufferings had been, so that this 
kingdom had kept the authority I wished it to maintain, by 
a grave foresight, and by an equitable temperance in the use of 
its power. 

The next article of charge on my public conduct, and that 
which I find rather the most prevalent of all, is Lord Beau- 
champ's bill : I mean his bill of last session, for reforming the 
law-process concerning imprisonment. It is said, to aggravate 
the offence, that I treated the petition of this city with con- 
tempt even in presenting it to the House, and expressed myself 
in terms of marked disrespect. Had this latter part of the 
charge been true, no merits on the side of the question which I 
took could possibly excuse me. But I am incapable of treating 
this city with disrespect. Very fortunately, at this minute, (if 
my bad eyesight does not deceive me,) the worthy gentleman 
deputed on this business stands directly before me. To him I 
appeal, whether I did not, though it militated with my oldest 
and my most recent public opinions, deliver the petition with a 
strong and more than usual recommendation to the considera- 
tion of the House, on account of the character and consequence 
of those who signed it. I believe the worthy gentleman will 
tell you that, the very day I received it, I applied to the Solic- 
itor, now the Attorney General, to give it an immediate consid- 
eration ; and he most obligingly and instantly consented to 
employ a great deal of his very valuable time to write an expla- 
nation of the bill. I attended the committee with all possible 
care and diligence, in order that every objection of yours might 
meet with a solution, or produce an alteration. I entreated 
your learned recorder (always ready in business in which you 
take a concern) to attend. But what will you say to those who 
blame me for supporting Lord Beauchamp's bill, as a disre- 
spectful treatment of your petition, when you hear that, out of 
respect to you, I myself was the cause of the loss of that very 
bill ? For the noble lord who brought it in, and who, I must 
say, has much merit for this and some other measures, at my 
request consented to put it off for a week, which the Speaker's 
illness lengthened to a fortnight ; and then the frantic tumult 
about Popery drove that and every rational business from the 
House. So that, if I chose to make a defence of myself, on the 
little principles of a culprit, pleading in his exculpation, I might 
not only secure my acquittal, but make merit with the opposers 
of the bill. But I shall do no such thing. The truth is, that I 
did occasion the loss of the bill, and by a delay caused by my 






SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 127 

respect to you. But such an event was never in my contempla- 
tion. And I am so far from taking credit for the defeat of that 
measure, that I cannot sufficiently lament my misfortune, if but 
one man, who ought to be at large, has passed a year in prison 
by my means. I am a debtor to the debtors. I confess judg- 
ment. I owe what, if ever it be in my power, I shall most cer- 
tainly pay,— ample atonement and usurious amends to liberty 
and humanity for my unhappy lapse. For, Gentlemen, Lord 
Beauchamp's bill was a law of justice and policy, as far as it 
went: I say, as far as it went ; for its fault was its being in the 
remedial part miserably defective. 

There are two capital faults in our law with relation to civil 
debts. One is, that every man is presumed solvent ; a presump- 
tion, in innumerable cases, directly against truth. Therefore 
the debtor is ordered, on a supposition of ability and fraud, to 
be coerced his liberty until he makes payment. By this means, 
in all cases of civil insolvency, without a pardon from his cred- 
itor, he is to be imprisoned for life ; and thus a miserable, mis- 
taken invention of artificial science operates to change a civil 
into a criminal judgment, and to scourge misfortune or indiscre- 
tion with a punishment which the law does not inflict on the 
greatest crimes. 

The next fault is, that the inflicting of that punishment is not 
on the opinion of an equal and public judge, but is referred to 
the arbitrary discretion of a private, nay, interested and irri- 
tated, individual. 2 He who formally is, and substantially ought 
to be, the judge, is in i*eality no more than ministerial, a mere 
executive instrument of a private man, who is at once judge 
and party. Every idea of judicial order is subverted by this 
procedure. If the insolvency be no crime, why is it punished 
with arbitrary imprisonment? If it be a crime, why is it deliv- 
ered into private hands to pardon without discretion, or to pun- 
ish without mercy and without measure ? 

To these faults, gross and cruel faults in our law, the excel- 
lent principle of Lord Beauchamp's bill applied some sort of 
remedy. I know that credit must be preserved : but equity 
must be preserved too ; and it is impossible that any thing 
should be necessary to commerce which is inconsistent with 
justice. The principle of credit was not weakened by that bill. 
God forbid ! The enforcement of that credit was only put into 
the same public judicial hands on which we depend for our lives 
and all that makes life dear to us. But indeed this business 
was taken up too warmly, both here and elsewhere. The bill 

2 This "private individual" is, to be sure, the creditor himself, whose will 
dominates the whole question; so that he is, to all intents and purposes, the 
judge in his own case, while the public judge is merely his minister or agent. 



128 BURKE. 

was extremely mistaken. It was supposed to enact what it 
never enacted ; and complaints were made of clauses in it, as 
novelties, winch existed before the noble lord that brought in 
the bill was born. There was a fallacy that ran through the 
whole of the objections. The gentlemen who opposed the bill 
always argued as if the option lay between that bill and the an- 
cient law. But this is a grand mistake. For, practically, the 
option is between not that bill and the old law, but between 
that bill and those occasional laws called Acts of Grace. For 
the operation of the old law is so savage, and so inconvenient 
to society, that for a long time past, once in every Parliament, 
and lately twice, the legislature has been obliged to make a 
general arbitrary jail-delivery, and at once to set open, by its 
sovereign authority, all the prisons in England. 

Gentlemen, I never relished Acts of grace, nor ever submit- 
ted to them but from despair of better. They are a dishonour- 
able invention, by which, not from humanity, not from policy, 
but merely because we have not room enough to hold these vic- 
tims of the absurdity of our laws, we turn loose upon the public 
three or four thousand naked wretches, corrupted by the hab- 
its, debased by the ignominy of a prison. If the creditor had a 
right to those carcasses as a natural security for his property, I 
am sure we have no right to deprive him of that security. But 
if the few pounds of flesh were not necessary to his security, 
we had not a right to' detain the unfortunate debtor, without 
any benefit at all to the person who confined him. Take it as 
you will, we commit injustice. JSTow LOrd Beauchamp's bill in- 
tended to- do deliberately, and with great caution and circum- 
spection, upon each several case, and with all attention to the 
just claimant, what Acts of grace do in a much greater meas- 
ure, and with very little care, caution, or deliberation. 

I suspect that here, too, if we contrive to oppose this bill, we 
shall be found in a struggle against the nature of things. For, 
as we grow enlightened, the public will not bear, for any length 
of time, to pay for the maintenance of whole armies of prison- 
ers, nor, at their own expense, submit to keep jails as a sort of 
garrisons, merely to fortify the absurd principle of making men 
judges in their own cause. For credit has little or no concern 
in this cruelty. I speak in a commercial assembly. You know 
that credit is given because capital must be employed; that men 
calculate the chances of insolvency ; and they either withhold 
the credit, or make the debtor pay the risk in the price. The 
counting-house has no alliance with the jail. Holland under- 
stands trade as well as we, and she has done much more than 
this obnoxious bill intended to do. There was not, when Mr. 
Howard visited Holland, more than one prisoner for debt in the 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 129 

great city of Rotterdam. Although Lord Beauchamp's Act 
(which was previous to this bill, and intended to feel the way 
for it) has already preserved liberty to thousands, and though 
it is not three years since the last Act of grace passed, yet, by 
Mr. Howard's last account, there were near three thousand 
again in jail. I cannot name this gentlemen without remarking 
that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes 
and hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe, not to sur- 
vey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples, 
not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient 
grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art, not 
to collect medals or collate manuscripts, — but to dive into the 
depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infections of hospitals, 
to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge 
and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to remem- 
ber the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the for- 
saken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in 
all countries. His plan is original ; and it is as full of genius 
as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery, a circum- 
navigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is felt 
more or less in every country ; I hope he will anticipate his 
final reward by seeing all its effects fully realized in his own. 
He will receive, not by retail, but in gross, the reward of those 
who visit the prisoner ; and he has so forestalled and monopo- 
lized this branch of charity, that there will be, I trust, little 
room to merit by such acts of benevolence hereafter. 

^Nothing now remains to trouble you with but the fourth 
charge against me, — the business of the Roman Catholics. It 
is a business closely connected with the rest. They are all on 
one and the same principle. My little scheme of conduct, such 
as it is, is all arranged. I could do nothing but what I have 
done on this subject, without confounding the whole train of 
my ideas and disturbing the whole order of my life. Gentle- 
men, I ought to apologize to you for seeming to think any thing 
at all necessary to be said upon this matter. The calumny is 
fitter to be scrawled with the midnight chalk of incendiaries, 
with "Xo Popery," on walls and doors of devoted houses, than 
to be mentioned in any civilized company. I had heard that 
the spirit of discontent on that subject was very prevalent here. 
"With pleasure I find that I have been grossly misinformed. If 
it exists at all in this city, the laws have crushed its exertions, 
and our morals have shamed its appearance in daylight. I 
have pursued this spirit wherever I could trace it ; but it still 
fled from me. It was a ghost which all had heard of, but none 
had seen. iNone would acknowledge that he thought the pub- 
lic proceeding with regard to our Catholic dissenters to be 



130 



BITBKE. 



blamable ; but several were sorry it had made an ill impression 
upon others, and that my interest was hurt by my share in the 
business. I find with satisfaction and pride, that not above 
four or five in this city (and I dare say these misled by some 
gross misrepresentation) have signed that symbol of delusion 
and bond of sedition, that libel on the national religion and 
English character, the Protestant Association. It is, there- 
fore, Gentlemen, not by way of cure, but of prevention, and 
lest the arts of wicked men may prevail over the integrity of 
any one amongst us, that I think it necessary to open to you 
the merits of this transaction pretty much at large ; and I beg 
your patience upon it ; for, although the reasonings that have 
been used to depreciate the Act are of little force, and though 
the authority of the men concerned in this ill design is not very 
imposing, yet the audaciousness of these conspirators against 
the national honour, and the extensive wickedness of their at- 
tempts, have raised persons of no little importance to a degree 
of evil eminence, and imparted a sort of sinister dignity to pro- 
ceedings that had their origin in only the meanest and blindest 
malice. 

In explaining to you the proceedings of Parliament which 
have been complained of, I will state to you, — first, the thing 
that was done, — next, the persons who did it, — and lastly, the 
grounds and reasons upon which the legislature proceeded in 
this deliberate act of public justice and public prudence. 

Gentlemen, the condition of our nature is such that we buy 
our blessings at a price. The reformation, one of the greatest 
periods of human improvement, was a time of trouble and con- 
fusion. The vast structure of superstition and tyranny which 
had been for ages in rearing, and which was 'combined with the 
interest of the great and of the many, which was moulded into 
the laws, the manners, and civil institutions of nations, and 
blended with the frame and policy of States, could not be 
brought to the ground without a fearful struggle ; nor could it 
fall without a violent concussion of itself and all about it. 
When this great revolution was attempted in a more regular 
mode by government, it was opposed by plots and seditions of 
the people ; when by popular efforts, it was repressed as rebel- 
lion by the hand of power ; and bloody executions (often 
bloodily returned) marked the whole of its progress through all 
its stages. The affairs of religion, which are no longer heard of 
in the tumult of our present contentions, made a principal 
ingredient in the wars and politics of that time : the enthu- 
siasm of religion threw a gloom over the politics ; and political 
interests poisoned and perverted the spirit of religion upon all 
sides. The Protestant religion, in that violent struggle, in- 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 131 

fected, as the Popish had been before, by worldly interests and 
worldly passions, became a persecutor in its turn, sometimes 
of the new sects, which carried their own principles further 
than it was convenient to the original reformers, and always of 
the body from whom they parted : and this persecuting spirit 
arose, not only from the bitterness of retaliation, but from the 
merciless policy of fear. 

It was long before the spirit of true piety and true wisdom, 
involved in the principles of the Reformation, could be depu- 
rated from the dregs and feculence of the contention with 
which it was carried through. However, until this be done, 
the Reformation is not complete : and those who think them- 
selves good Protestants, from their animosity to others, are in 
that respect no Protestants at all. It was at first thought 
necessary, perhaps, to oppose to Popery another Popery, to get 
the better of it. Whatever was the cause, laws were made in 
many countries, and in this kingdom in particular, against 
Papists, which are as bloody as any of those which had been 
enacted by the Popish princes and States : and where those 
laws were not bloody, in my opinion they were worse ; as they 
were slow, cruel outrages on our nature, and kept men alive 
only to insult in their persons every one of the rights and 
feelings of humanity. I pass those statutes, because I would 
spare your pious ears the repetition of such shocking things ; 
and I come to that particular law the repeal of which has pro- 
duced so many unnatural and unexpected consequences. 

A statute was fabricated in the year 1699, by which the saying 
mass (a church service in the Latin tongue, not exactly the 
same as our liturgy, but very near it, and containing no offence 
whatsoever against the laws, or against good morals) was forged 
into a crime, punishable with perpetual imprisonment. The 
teaching school, an useful and virtuous occupation, even the 
teaching in a private family, was in every Catholic subjected to 
the same unproportioned punishment. Your industry, and the 
bread of your children, was taxed for a pecuniary reward to 
stimulate avarice to do what Nature refused, to inform and 
prosecute on this law. Every Roman Catholic was, under the 
same Act, to forfeit his estate to his nearest Protestant relation, 
until, through a profession of what he did not believe, he re- 
deemed by his hypocrisy what the law had transferred to the 
kinsman as the recompense of his profligacy. When thus 
turned out of doors from his paternal estate, he was disabled 
from acquiring any other by any industry, donation, or char- v 
ity ; but was rendered a foreigner in his native land, only be- 
cause he retained the religion, along with the property, handed 



132 BURKE. 

down to him from those who had been the old inhabitants of 
that land before him. 

Does any one who hears me approve this scheme of things, or 
think there is common justice, common sense, or common hon- 
esty in any part of it? If any does, let him say it, and I am 
ready to discuss the point with temper and candour. But in- 
stead of approving, I perceive a virtuous indignation beginning 
to rise in your minds on the mere cold stating of the statute. 

But what will you feel, when you know from history how this 
statute passed, and what were the motives, and what the mode 
of making it ? A party in this nation, enemies to the system of 
the Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King 
William. They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy 
to all persecution. They knew that he came to free us from 
slavery and Popery, out of a country where a third of the peo- 
ple are contented Catholics under a Protestant government. 
He came with a part of his army composed of those very Catho- 
lics, to overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect 
of a tolerating spirit ; and so much is liberty served in every 
way, and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own prin- 
ciples. Whilst freedom is true to itself, every thing becomes 
subject to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its 
hands. 

The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would dis- 
parage the best friends of their country) resolved to make the 
King either violate his principles of toleration or incur the odi- 
um of protecting Papists. They therefore brought in this bill, 
and made it purposely wicked and absurd that it might be re- 
jected. The then Court party, discovering their game, turned 
the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed with 
still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon its original 
authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back to them, 
kicked it back again to their adversaries. And thus this Act, 
loaded with the double injustice of two parties, neither of 
whom intended to pass what they hoped the other would be 
persuaded to reject, went through the legislature, contrary to 
the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the parties that com- 
posed it. In this manner these insolent and profligate factions, 
as if they were playing with balls and counters, made a sport of 
the fortunes and the liberties of their fellow-creatures. Other 
Acts of persecution have been Acts of malice. This was a 
subversion of justice fro-m wantonness and petulance. Look 
into the history of Bishop Burnet. He is a witness without 
exception. 

The effects of the Act have been as mischievous as its origin 
was ludicrous and shameful. Prom that time, every person of 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 133 

that communion, lay and ecclesiastic, has been obliged to fly 
from the face of day. The clergy, concealed in garrets of pri- 
vate houses, or obliged to take a shelter (hardly safe to them- 
selves, but infinitely dangerous to their country) under the 
privileges of foreign ministers, officiated as their servants and 
under their protection. The whole body of the Catholics, con- 
demned to beggary and ignorance in their native land, have 
been obliged to learn the principles of letters, at the hazard of 
all their ether principles, from the charity of your enemies. 
They have been taxed to their ruin at the pleasure of necessitous 
and profligate relations, and according to the measure of their ne- 
cessity and profligacy. Examples of this are many and affect- 
ing. Some of them are known by a friend who stands near me 
in this hall. It is but six or seven years since a clergyman, of 
the name of Malony, a man of morals, neither guilty nor ac- 
cused of any thing noxious to the State, was condemned to per- 
petual imprisonment for exercising the functions of his religion; 
and, after lying in jail two or three years, was relieved by the 
mercy of government from perpetual imprisonment, on condi- 
tion of perpetual banishment. A brother of the Earl of 
Shrewsbury, a Talbot, a name respectable in this country 
whilst its glory is any part of its concern, was hauled to the bar of 
the Old Bailey, among common felons, and only escaped the same 
doom either by some error in the process, or that the wretch 
who brought him there could not correctly describe his person, 
— I now forget which. In short, the persecution would never 
have relented for a moment, if the judges, superseding (though 
with an ambiguous example) the strict rule of their artificial 
duty by the higher obligation of their conscience, did not con- 
stantly throw every difficulty in the way of such informers. 
But so ineffectual is the power of legal evasion against legal 
iniquity, that it was but the other day that a lady of condition, 
beyond the middle of life, was on the point of being stripped of 
her whole fortune by a near relation to whom she had been a 
friend and benefactor ; and she must have been totally ruined, 
without a power of redress or mitigation from the courts of law, 
had not the legislature itself rushed in, and by a special Act of 
Parliament rescued her from the injustice of its own statutes. 
One of the Acts authorizing such things was that which we in 
part repealed, knowing what our duty was, and doing that duty 
as men of honour and virtue, as good Protestants, and as good 
citizens. Let him stand forth that disapproves what we have 
done ! 

Gentlemen, bad laws are the worst sort.of tyranny. In such 
a country as this they are of all bad things the worst, — worse 
by far than anywhere else ; and they derive a particular malig- 



134 BURKE. 

nity even from the wisdom and soundness of the rest of our 
institutions. For very obvious reasons you cannot trust the 
Crown with a dispensing power over any of your laws. How- 
ever, a government, be it as bad as it may, will, in the exercise 
of a discretionary power, discriminate times and persons, and 
will not ordinarily pursue any man, when its own safety is not 
concerned. A mercenary informer knows no distinction. Un- 
der such a system, the obnoxious people are slaves not only to 
the government, but they live at the mercy of every indi- 
vidual ; they are at once the slaves of the whole community 
^and of every part of it; and the worst and most unmerciful 
men are those on whose goodness they most depend. 

In this situation, men not only shrink from the frowns of a 
stern magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very 
species. The seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, 
in social habitudes. The blood of wholesome kindred is in- 
fected. Their tables and beds are surrounded with snares. 
All the means given by Providence to make life safe and com- 
fortable are perverted into instruments of terror and torment. 
This species of universal subserviency, that makes the very 
servant who waits behind your chair the arbiter of your life and 
fortune, has such a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, 
and to deprive them of that assured and liberal state of mind 
which alone can make us what we ought to be, that I vow to 
God I would sooner bring myself to put a man to immediate 
death for opinions I disliked, and so get rid of the man and his 
opinions at once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted 
with the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him 
above ground an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted 
himself, and corrupting all about him. 

The Act repealed was of this direct tendency ; and it was 
made in the manner which I have related to you. I will now 
tell you by whom the bill of repeal was brought into Parlia- 
ment. I find it has been industriously given out in this city 
(from kindness to me, unquestionably) that I was the mover or 
the seconder. The fact is, I did not once open my lips on the 
subject during the whole progress of the bill. I do not say this 
as disclaiming my share in that measure. Yery far from it. 
1 inform you of this fact, lest I should seem to arrogate to 
myself the merits which belong to others. To have been the 
man chosen out to redeem our fellow-citizens from slavery, to 
purify our laws from absurdity and injustice, and to cleanse our 
religion from the blot and stain of persecution, would be an 
honour and happiness, to which my wishes would undoubtedly 
aspire, but to which nothing but my wishes could possibly have 
entitled me. That great work was in hands in every respect 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOKS OF BRISTOL. 135 

far better qualified than mine. The mover of the bill was Sir 
George Savile. 

When an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, 
and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to it, 
the world could cast its eyes upon none but him. I hope that 
few things which have a tendency to bless or to adorn life have 
wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it. I 
have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen 
him in all situations. He is a true genius ; with an understand- 
ing vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even 
to excess ; and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, 
and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses 
many external and instrumental advantages ; and he makes 
use of them all. His fortune is among the largest,— a fortune 
which, wholly unincumbered as it is with one single charge 
from luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of 
its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into 
patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in 
which he has not reserved a peculium for himself of profit, 
diversion, or relaxation. During the session the first in and 
the last out of the House of Commons, he passes from, the 
senate to the camp ; and, seldom seeing the seat of his ances- 
tors, he is always in Parliament to serve his country, or in the 
field to defend it. But in all well-wrought compositions some 
particulars stand out more eminently than the rest ; and the 
things which will carry his name to posterity are his two bills : 
I. mean that for a limitation of the claims of the Crown upon 
landed estates, and this for the relief of the Roman Catholics. 
By the former he has emancipated property ; by the latter he 
has quieted conscience ; and by both he has taught tb/it grand 
lesson to government and subject, — no longer to regard each 
other as adverse parties. 

Such was the mover of the Act that is complained of by men 
who are not quite so good as he is, — an Act most assuredly not 
brought in by him from any partiality to that sect which is the 
object of it. For among his faults! really cannot help reckon- 
ing a greater degree of prejudice against that people than be- 
comes so wise a man. I know that he inclines to a sort of dis- 
gust, mixed with a considerable degree of asperity, to the 
system; and he has few, or rather no habits with any of its 
professors. What he has done was on quite other motives. 
The motives were these, which he declared in his excellent 
speech on his motion for the bill,— namely, his extreme zeal to 
the Protestant religion, which he thought utterly disgraced by 
the Act of 1699 ; and his rooted hatred to all kind of oppression, 
under any colour, or upon any pretence whatsoever. 



136 BUEKE. 

The seconder was worthy of the mover and the motion. I 
was not the seconder; it was Mr. Dunning, recorder of this 
city. 3 I shall say the less of him, because his near relation to 
you makes you more particularly acquainted with his merits. 
But I should appear little acquainted with them, or little sensi- 
ble of them, if I could utter his name on this occasion without 
expressing my esteem for his character. I am not afraid of 
offending a most learned body, and most jealous of its reputa- 
tion for that learning, when I say he is the first of his profes- 
sion. It is a point settled by those who settle every thing else : 
and I must add (what I am enabled to say from my own long 
and close observation) that there is not a man of any profes- 
sion, or in any situation, of a more erect and independent 
spirit; of a more proud honour, a more manly mind, a more 
firm and determined integrity. Assure yourselves, that the 
names of two such men will bear a great load of prejudice in 
the other scale before they can be entirely outweighed. 

"With this mover and this seconder agreed the whole House of 
Commons, the whole House of Lords, the whole Bench of 
Bishops, the King, the Ministry, the opposition, all the dis- 
tinguished clergy of the Establishment, all the eminent lights 
(for they were consulted) of the dissenting churches. This 
according voice of national wisdom ought to be listened 
to with reverence. .To say that all these descriptions of Eng- 
lishmen unanimously concurred in a scheme for introducing the 
Catholic religion, or that none of them understood the nature 
and effects of what they were doing so Avell as a few obscure 
clubs of people whose names you never heard of, is shamelessly 
absurd. Surely it is paying a miserable compliment to the 
religion we profess, to suggest that every thing eminent in the 
kingdom is indifferent or even adverse to that religion, and 
that its security is wholly abandoned to the zeal of those who 
have nothing but their zeal to distinguish them. In weighing 
this unanimous concurrence of whatever the nation has to 
boast of, I hope you will recollect that all these concurring 
parties do by no means love one another enough to agree in 
any point which was not both evidently and importantly right. 

To prove this, to prove that the measure was both clearly and 
materially proper, I will next lay before you (as I promised) the 

3 This Ml*. Dunning, though Recorder of Bristol, Avas not a member of Par- 
liament for that city. He it was who, some time before the delivery of this 
speech, moved the famous resolution declaring "That the influence of the 
Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished"; which made 
the first practicable breach in the policy of the Court. He was a lawyer of emi- 
nent ability, an ungraceful but powerful debater, and was afterwards made 
Lord Ashburton. 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOES OF BEISTOL. 137 

political grounds and reasons for the repeal of that penal 
statute, and the motives to its repeal at that particular time. 

Gentlemen, America. When the English nation seemed 

to be dangerously, if not irrecoverably divided,— when one, 
and that the most growing branch, was torn from the parent 
stock, and ingrafted on the power of France, a great terror fell 
upon this kingdom. On a sudden we awakened from our dreams 
of conquest, and saw ourselves threatened with an immediate 
invasion, which we were at that time very ill prepared to resist. 
You remember the cloud that gloomed over us all. In that 
hour of our dismay, from the bottom of the hiding-places into 
which the indiscriminate rigour of our statutes had driven 
them, came out the body of the Roman Catholics. They 
appeared before the steps of a tottering throne, with one of the 
most sober, measured, steady, and dutiful addresses that was 
ever presented to the Crown. It was no holiday ceremony, no 
anniversary compliment of parade and show. It was signed by 
almost every gentleman of that persuasion, of note or property, 
in England. At such a crisis, nothing but a decided resolution 
to stand or fall with their country could have dictated such an 
address, the direct tendency of which was to cut off all retreat, 
and to render them peculiarly obnoxious to an invader of their 
own communion. The address showed what I long languished 
to see, that all the subjects of England had cast off all foreign 
views and connections, and that every man looked for his 
relief from every grievance at the hands only of his own natu- 
ral government. 

It was necessary, on our part, that the natural government 
should show itself worthy of that name. It was necessary, at 
the crisis I speak of, that the supreme power of the State should 
meet the conciliatory dispositions of the subject. To delay 
protection would be to reject allegiance. And why should it 
be rejected, or even coldly and suspiciously received ? If any 
independent Catholic State should choose to take part with 
this kingdom in a war with France and Spain, that bigot (if such 
a bigot could be found) would be heard with little respect, who 
could dream of objecting his religion to an ally whom the nation 
would not only receive with its freest thanks, but purchase 
with the last remains of its exhausted treasure. To such an 
ally we should not dare to whisper a single syllable of those 
base and invidious topics upon which some unhappy men 
would persuade the State to reject the duty and allegiance of 
its own members. Is it, then, because foreigners are in a con- 
dition to set our malice at defiance, that with them we are will- 
ing to contract engagements of friendship, and to keep them 
with fidelity and honour, but that, because we conceive some 



138 BURKE. 

descriptions of our countrymen are not powerful enough to pun- 
ish our malignity, we will not permit them to support our com- 
mon interest? Is it on that ground that our anger is to be 
kindled by their offered kindness? Is it on that ground that 
they are to be subjected to penalties, because they are willing 
by actual merit to purge themselves from imputed crimes? 
Lest by an adherence to the cause of their country they should 
acquire a title to fair and equitable treatment, are we resolved 
to furnish them with causes of eternal enmity, and rather sup- 
ply them with just and founded motives to disaffection than 
not to have that disaffection in existence, to justify an oppres- 
sion which, not from policy, but disposition, we have predeter- 
mined to exercise ? 

What shadow of reason could be assigned, why, at a time 
when the most Protestant part of this Protestant empire found 
it for its advantage to unite with the two principal Popish 
States, to unite itself in the closest bonds with France and 
Spain, for our destruction, that we should refuse to unite 
with our own Catholic countrymen for our own preservation ? 
Ought we, like madmen, to tear off the plasters that the lenient 
hand of prudence had spread over the wounds and gashes 
which in our delirium of ambition we had given to our own 
body? No person ever reprobated the American war more 
than I did, and do, and ever shall. But I never will consent 
that we should lay additional, voluntary penalties on ourselves, 
for a fault which carries but too much of its own punishment in 
its own nature. For one, I was delighted with the proposal of 
internal peace. I accepted the blessing with thankfulness and 
transport. I was truly happy to find one good effect of our civil 
distractions, — that they had put an end to all religious strife and 
heart-burning in our own bowels. What must be the senti- 
ments of a man who would wish to perpetuate domestic hostil- 
ity when the causes of disx^ute are at an end, and who, crying 
out for peace with one part of the nation on the most humiliat- 
ing terms, should deny it to those who offer friendship without 
any terms at all ? 

But if I was unable to reconcile such a denial to the contracted 
principles of local duty, what answer could I give to the broad 
claims of general humanity? I confess to you freely, that the 
sufferings and distresses of the people of America in this cruel 
war have at times affected me more deeply than I can express. 
I felt every gazette of triumph as a blow upon my heart, which 
lias an hundred times sunk and fainted within me at all the mis- 
chiefs brought upon those who bear the whole brunt of war in 
the heart of their country. Yet the Americans are utter stran- 
gers to me ; a nation among whom I am not sure that I have a 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 139 

single acquaintance. "Was I to suffer my mind to be so unac- 
countably warped, was I to keep such iniquitous weights and 
measures of temper and of reason, as to sympathize with those 
who are in open rebellion against an authority which I respect, 
at war with a country which by every title ought to be, and is, 
most dear to me, — and yet to have no feeling at all for the hard- 
ships and indignities suffered by men who by their very vicinity 
are bound up in a nearer relation to us, who contribute their 
share, and more than their share, to the common prosperity, 
who perform the common offices of social life, and who obey 
the laws, to the full as well as I do ? Gentlemen, the danger to 
the State being out of the question, (of which, let me tell you, 
statesmen themselves are apt to have but too exquisite a. 
sense,) I could assign no one reason of justice, policy, or feeling, 
for not concurring most cordially, as most cordially I did con- 
cur, in softening some part of that shameful servitude under 
which several of my worthy fellow-citizens were groaning. 

Important effects followed this act of wisdom. They ap- 
peared at home and abroad, to the great benefit of this king- 
dom, and, let me hope, to the advantage of mankind at large. 
It betokened union among ourselves. It showed soundness, 
even on the part of the persecuted, winch generally is the weak 
side of every community. But its most essential operation was 
not in England. The Act was immediately, though very imper- 
fectly, copied in Ireland ; and this imperfect transcript of an 
imperfect Act, this first faint sketch of toleration, which did 
little more than disclose a principle and mark out a disposition, 
completed in a most wonderful manner the reunion to the State 
of all the Catholics of that country. It made us what we ought 
always to have been, one family, one body, one heart and soul, 
against the family combination and all other combinations of 
our enemies. We have indeed obligations to that people who 
received such small benefits with so much gratitude, and for 
which gratitude and attachment to us I am afraid they have 
suffered not a little in other places. 

I dare say you have all heard of the privileges indulged to the 
Irish Catholics residing in Spain. You have likewise heard 
with what circumstances of severity they have been lately ex- 
pelled from the seaports of that kingdom, driven into the inland 
cities, and there detained as a sort of prisoners of State. I have 
good reason to believe that it was the zeal to our government 
and our cause (somewhat indiscreetly expressed in one of the 
addresses of the Catholics of Ireland) which has thus drawn 
down on their heads the indignation of the Court of Madrid, to 
the inexpressible loss of several individuals, and, in future, per- 
haps to the great detriment of the whole of their body. Now 



140 BUKKE. 

that our people should be persecuted in Spain for their attach- 
ment to this country, and persecuted in this country for their 
supposed enmity to us, is such a jarring reconciliation of con- 
tradictory distresses, is a thing at once so dreadful and ridicu- 
lous, that no malice short of diabolical would wish to continue 
any human creatures in such a situation. But honest men will 
not forget either their merit or their sufferings. There are men 
(and many, I trust, there are) who, out of love to their country 
and their kind, would torture their invention to find excuses for 
the mistakes of their brethren, and who, to stifle dissension, 
would construe even doubtful appearances with the utmost 
favour: such men will never persuade themselves to be ingen- 
ious and refined in discovering disaffection and treason in the 
manifest, palpable signs of suffering loyalty. Persecution is so 
unnatural to them, that they gladly snatch the very first oppor- 
tunity of laying aside all the tricks and devices of penal politics, 
and of returning home, after all their irksome and vexatious 
wanderings, to our natural family mansion, to the grand social 
principle that unites all men, in all descriptions, under the 
shadow of an equal and impartial justice. 

Men of another sort, I mean the bigoted enemies to liberty, 
may, perhaps, in their politics, make no account of the good or 
ill affection of the Catholics of England, who are but a handful 
of people, (enough to torment, but not enough to fear,) perhaps 
not so many, of both sexes and of all ages, as fifty thousand. 
But, Gentlemen, it is possible you may not know that the peo- 
ple of that persuasion in Ireland amount at least to sixteen or 
seventeen hundred thousand souls. I do not at all exaggerate 
the number. A nation to be persecuted ! Whilst we were mas- 
ters of the sea, embodied with America, and in alliance with 
half the powers of the Continent, we might, perhaps, in that re- 
mote corner of Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But 
there is a revolution in our affairs, which makes it prudent to be 
just. In our late awkward contest with Ireland about trade, had 
religion been thrown in, to ferment and embitter the mass of 
discontents, the consequences might have been truly dreadful. 
But, very happily, that cause of quarrel was previously quieted 
by the wisdom of the Acts I am commending. 

Even in England, where I admit the danger from the discon- 
tent of that persuasion to be less than in Ireland, yet even here, 
had we listened to the counsels of fanaticism and folly, wo 
might have wounded ourselves very deeply, and wounded our- 
selves in a very tender part. You are apprised that the Catho- 
lics of England consist mostly of our best manufacturers. Had 
the legislature chosen, instead of returning their declarations of 
duty with correspondent good will, to drive them to despair, 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOKS OF BRISTOL. 141 

there is a country at their very door to which they would be 
invited, — a country in all respects as good as ours, and with the 
finest cities in the world ready built to receive them. And 
thus the bigotry of a free country, and in an enlightened age, 
would have repeopled the cities of Flanders, which, in the dark- 
ness of two hundred years ago, had been desolated by the super- 
stition of a cruel tyrant. Our manufactures were the growth of 
the persecutions in the Low Countries. What a spectacle would 
it be to Europe, to see us at this time of day balancing the 
account of tyranny with those very countries, and by our per- 
secutions driving back trade and manufacture, as a sort of 
vagabonds, to their original settlement ! But I trust we shall 
be saved this last of disgraces. 

So far as to the effect of the Act on the interests of this 
nation. With regard to the interests of mankind at large, I am 
sure the benefit was very considerable. Long before this Act, 
indeed, the spirit of toleration began to gain ground in Europe. 
In Holland the third part of the people are. Catholics ; they live 
at ease, and are a sound part of the State. In many parts of 
Germany, Protestants and Papists partake the same cities, the 
same councils, and even the same churches. The unbounded 
liberality of the King of Prussia's conduct on this occasion is 
known to all the world ; and it is of a piece with the other 
grand maxims of his reign. The magnanimity of the Imperial 
Court, breaking through the narrow principles of its predeces- 
sors, has indulged its Protestant subjects, not only with prop- 
erty, with worship, with liberal education, but with honours 
and trusts, both civil and military. A worthy Protestant 
gentleman of this country now fills, and fills with credit, an 
high office in the Austrian Netherlands. Even the Lutheran 
obstinacy of Sweden has thawed at length, and opened a tolera- 
tion to all religions. I know, myself, that in France the Prot- 
estants begin to be at rest. The army, which in that country is 
every thing, is open to them ; and some of the military rewards 
and decorations which the laws deny are supplied by others, 
to make the service acceptable and honourable. The first min- 
ister of finance in that country is a Protestant. Two years' war 
without a tax is among the first fruits of their liberality. 
Tarnished as the glory of this nation is, and far as it has waded 
into the shades of an eclipse, some beams of its former illumin- 
ation still play upon its surface ; and what is done in England 
is still looked to, as argument, and as example. It is certainly 
true, that no law of this country ever met with such universal 
applause abroad, or was so likely to produce the perfection of 
that tolerating spirit which, as I observed, has been long 
gaining ground in Europe : for abroad it was universally thought 



142 BURKE. 

that we had done what I am sorry to say we had not ; they 
thought we had granted a full toleration. That opinion was, 
however, so far from hurting the Protestant cause, that I 
declare, with the most serious solemnity, my firm belief that 
no one thing done for these fifty years past was so likely to 
prove deeply beneficial to our religion at large as Sir George 
Savile's Act. In its effects it was "an Act for tolerating and 
protecting Protestantism throughout Europe"; and I hope 
that those who were taking steps for the quiet and settlement 
of our Protestant brethren in other countries will, even yet, 
rather consider the steady equity of the greater and better 
part of the people of Great Britain than the vanity and violence 
of a few. • 

I perceive, Gentlemen, by the manner of all about me, that 
you look with horror on the wicked clamour which has been 
raised on this subject, and that, instead of an apology for what 
was done, you rather demand from me an account, why the 
execution of the scheme of toleration was not made more 
answerable to the large and liberal grounds on which it was 
taken up. The question is natural and proper ; and I remem- 
ber that a great and learned magistrate, 4 distinguished for his 
strong and systematic understanding, and who at that time was 
a member of the House of Commons, made the same objection 
to the proceeding. The statutes, as they now stand, are, 
without doubt, perfectly absurd. But I beg leave to explain 
the cause of this gross imperfection in the tolerating plan, as 
well and as shortly as I am able. It was universally thought 
that the session ought not to pass over without doing something 
in this business. To revise the whole body of the penal stat- 
utes was conceived to be an object too big for the time. The 
penal statute, therefore, which was chosen for repeal (chosen to 
show our disposition to conciliate, not to perfect a toleration) 
was this Act of ludicrous cruelty of which I have just given you 
the history. It is an Act which, though not by a great deal so 
fierce and bloody as some of the rest, was infinitely more 
ready in the execution. It was the Act which gave the great- 
est encouragement to those pests of society, mercenary inform- 
ers and interested disturbers of household peace ; and it was 
observed with truth, that the prosecutions, either carried to 
conviction or compounded, for many years, had been all com- 
menced upon that Act. It was said that, whilst we were 
deliberating on a more perfect scheme, the spirit of the age 

4 The allusion is to Thurlow, who was transferred to the House of Lords, as 
Baron Thurlow, and made Lord Chancellor, in 1779. At the time the Act in 
question was passed, he was Attorney General, and a member of the House of 
Commons. 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 143 

would never come up to the execution of the statutes which 
remained, especially as more steps, and a cooperation of more 
minds and powers, were required towards a mischievous use of 
them than for the execution of the Act to be repealed ; that it 
was better to unravel this texture from below than from above, 
beginning with the latest, which, in general practice, is the 
severest evil. It was alleged that this slow proceeding would 
be attended with the advantage of a progressive experience ; 
and that the people would grow reconciled to toleration, when 
they should find, by the effects, that justice was not so irrecon- 
cilable an enemy to convenience as they had imagined. 

These, Gentlemen, were the reasons why we left this good 
work in the rude, unfinished state in which good works are com- 
monly left, through the tame circumspection with which a timid 
prudence so frequently enervates beneficence. In doing good, 
we are generally cold and languid and sluggish, and of all things 
afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice 
and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with 
a bold, masterly hand, touched as they are with the spirit of 
those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, when- 
ever we oppress and persecute. 

Thus this matter was left for the time, with a full determina- 
tion in Parliament not to suffer other and worse statutes to 
remain for the purpose of counteracting the benefits proposed 
by the repeal of one penal law: for nobody then dreamed of 
defending what was done as a benefit, on the ground of its being 
no benefit at all. "We were not then ripe for so mean a subter- 
fuge. 

I do not wish to go over the horrid scene that was afterwards 
acted. Would to God it could be expunged for ever from the 
annals of this country! But since it must subsist for our shame, 
let it subsist for our instruction. In the year 1780 there were 
found in this nation men deluded enough, (for I give the whole 
to their delusion,) on pretences of zeal and piety, without any 
sort of provocation whatsoever, real or pretended, to make a 
desperate attempt, which would have consumed all the glory 
and power of this country in the flames of London, and buried 
all law, order, and religion under the ruins of the metropolis of 
the Protestant world. Whether all this mischief done, or in the 
direct train of doing, was in their original scheme, I cannot say; 
I hope it was not: but this would have been the unavoidable 
consequence of their proceedings, had not the flames they had 
lighted up in their fury been extinguished in their blood. 5 

5 In this part of the speech, Burke is referring to what are known as the 
Lord George Gordon riots, which took place in the June preceding. Lord 



1 44 BUEKE. 

All the time that this horrid scene was acting, or avenging, as 
well as for some time before, and ever since, the wicked instiga- 
tors of this unhappy multitude, guilty, with every aggravation, 
of all their crimes, and screened in a cowardly darkness from 
their punishment, continued, without interruption, pity, or re- 
morse, to blow up the blind rage of the populace with a contin- 
ued blast of pestilential libels, which infected and poisoned the 
very air we breathed in. 

The main drift of all the libels and all the riots was, to force 
Parliament (to persuade us was hopeless) into an act of national 
perfidy which has no example. For, Gentlemen, it is proper 
you should all know what infamy we escaped by refusing that 
repeal, for a refusal of which, it seems, I, among others, stand 
somewhere or other accused. When we took away, on the mo- 
tives which I had the honour of stating to you, a few of the in- 
numerable penalties upon an oppressed and injured people, the 
relief was not absolute, but given on a stipulation and compact 
between them and us : for we bound down the Eoman Catholics 
with the most solemn oaths to bear true allegiance to this gov- 
ernment, to abjure all sort of temporal power in any other, and 
to renounce, under the same obligations, the doctrines of sys- 
tematic perfidy with which they stood (I conceive very unjustly) 
charged. Now our modest petitioners came up to us, most 
humbly praying nothing more than that we should break our 
faith, without any one cause whatsoever of forfeiture assigned ; 
and when the subjects of this kingdom had, on their part, fully 
performed their engagement, we should refuse, on our part, the 
benefit we had stipulated on the performance of those very 
conditions that were prescribed by our own authority, and 
taken on the sanction of our public faith: that is to say, when 
we had inveigled them with fair promises within our door, we 
were to shut it on them, and, adding mockery to outrage, to 
tell them, — "]STow we have got you fast : your consciences are 
bound to a power resolved on your destruction. We have made 
you swear that your religion obliges you to keep your faith : 
fools as you are ! we will now let you see that our religion 
enjoins us to keep no faith with you." They who would advis- 
edly call upon us to do such things must certainly have thought 

George was a member of the House of Commons from Scotland, and was a 
crazy fanatic; and, in that dreadful time of havoc and conflagration and mur- 
der, lie led a huge rabble to the doors of Parliament, to browheat and frighten 
the Houses into a repeal of the Act in question. Burke, was among the foremost 
of the members in resisting these mad and brutal proceedings : there was no 
quailing in him ; he faced the mob right up, and probably saved his life partly 
by his fearless bearing, which struck admiration and awe into the rioters. But 
the story is too long for the compass of a note. The horrid scenes are depicted 
at full length in Dickens's Barnaby Budge. 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOES OE BRISTOL. 145 

us not only a convention of treacherous tyrants, but a gang of 
the lowest and dirtiest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. 
Had we done this we should have indeed proved that there 
were some in the world whom no faith could bind; and we 
should have convicted ourselves of that odious principle of which 
Papists stood accused by those very savages who wished us, on 
that accusation, to deliver them over to their fury. 

In this audacious tumult, when our very name and character 
as gentlemen was to be cancelled for ever, along with the faith 
and honour of the nation, I, who had exerted myself very little 
on the quiet passing of the bill, thought it necessary then to 
come forward. I was not alone ; but, though some distin- 
guished members on all sides, and particularly on ours, added 
much to their high reputation by the part they took on that 
day, (a part which will be remembered as long as honour, spirit, 
and eloquence have estimation in the world,) I may and will 
value myself so far, that, yielding in abilities to many, I yielded 
in zeal to none. With warmth and with vigour, and animated 
with a just and natural indignation, I called forth every faculty 
that I possessed, and I directed it in everyway in which I could 
possibly employ it. I laboured night and day. I laboured in 
Parliament ; I laboured' out of Parliament. If, therefore, the 
resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to commit this 
act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty among the 
foremost. But indeed, whatever the faults of that House may 
have been, no one member was found hardy enough to propose 
so infamous a thing ; and on full debate we passed the resolu- 
tion against the petitions with as much unanimity as we had 
formerly passed the law of which these petitions demanded the 
repeal. 

There was a circumstance (justice will not suffer me to pass it 
over) which, if any thing could enforce the reasons I have 
given, would fully justify the Act of relief, and render a repeal, 
or any thing like a repeal, unnatural, impossible. It was the 
behaviour of the persecuted Koman Catholics under the acts 
of violence and brutal insolence which they suffered. I sup- 
pose there are not in London less than four or five thousand of 
that persuasion from my country, who do a great deal of the 
most laborious works in the metropolis ; and they chiefly in- 
habit those quarters which were the principal theatre of the fury 
of the bigoted multitude. They are known to be men of strong 
arms and quick feelings, and more remarkable for a determined 
resolution than clear ideas or much foresight. But, though 
provoked by every thing that can stir the blood of men, their 
houses and chapels in flames, and with the most atrocious profa- 
nations of every thing which they hold sacred before their eyes, 



146 BURKE. 

not a hand was moved to retaliate, or even to defend. Had a 
conflict once begun, the rage of their persecutors would have 
redoubled. Thus fury increasing by the reverberation of out- 
rages, house being fired for house, and church for chapel, I am 
convinced that no power under heaven could have prevented a 
general conflagration, and at this day London would have been 
a tale. But I am well informed, and the thing speaks it, that 
their clergy exerted their whole influence to keep their people 
in such a state of forbearance and quiet, as, when I look back, 
fills me with astonishment, — but not with astonishment only. 
Their merits on that occasion ought not to be forgotten ; nor 
will they, when Englishmen come to recollect tjiemselves. I 
am sure it were far more proper to have called them forth, and 
given them the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, than to 
have suffered those worthy clergymen and excellent citizens to 
be hunted into holes and corners, whilst we are making low- 
, minded inquisitions into the number of their people ; as if a 
tolerating principle was never to prevail, unless we were very 
sure that only a few could possibly take advantage of it. But 
indeed we are not yet well recovered of our fright. -Our reason, 
I trust, will return with our security, and this unfortunate tem- 
per will pass over like a cloud. 

Gentlemen, I have now laid before you a few of the reasons 
for taking away the penalties of the Act of 1699, and for refus- 
ing to establish them on the riotous requisition of 1780. Be- 
cause I would not suffer any thing which may be for your satis- 
faction to escape, permit me just to touch on the objections 
urged against our Act and our resolves, and intended as a justi- 
fication of the violence offered to both Houses. "Parliament," 
they assert, "was too hasty, and they ought, in so essential and 
alarming a change, to have proceeded with a far greater degree 
of deliberation." The direct contrary. Parliament was too 
slow. They took fourscore years to deliberate on the repeal of 
an Act which ought not to have survived a second session. 
When at length, after a procrastination of near a century, the 
business was taken up, it proceeded in the most public manner, 
by the ordinary stages, and as slowly as a law so evidently right 
as to be resisted by none would naturally advance. Had it been 
read three times in one day, we should have shown only a be- 
coming readiness to recognize, by protection, the undoubted 
dutiful behaviour of those whom we had but too long punished 
for offences of presumption or conjecture. But for what end 
was that bill to linger beyond the usual period of an unopposed 
measure? Was it to be delayed until a rabble in Edinburgh 
should dictate to the Church of England what measure of per- 
secution was fitting for her safety? Was it to be adjourned 



SPEECH TO THE ELECTOES OF BRISTOL. 147 

until a fanatical force could be collected in London, sufficient to 
frighten us out of all our ideas of policy and justice ? Were we 
to wait for the profound lectures on the reason of State, eccle- 
siastical and political, which the Protestant Association have 
since condescended to read to us ? Or were we, seven hundred 
peers and commoners, the only persons ignorant of the ribald 
invectives which occupy the place of argument in those remon- 
strances, which every man of common observation had heard a 
thousand times over, and a thousand times over had despised ? 
All men had before heard what they have to say, and all men 
at this day know what they dare to do ; and I trust all honest 
men are equally influenced by the one and by the other. 

But they tell us that those our fellow-citizens whose chains 
we have a little relaxed are enemies to liberty and our free 
Constitution. — Not enemies, I presume, to their own liberty. 
And as to the Constitution, until we give them some share in it, 
I do not know on what pretence we can examine into their opin- 
ions about a business in which they have no interest or concern. 
But, after all, are we equally sure that they are adverse to our 
Constitution as that our statutes are hostile and destructive to 
them? For my part, I have reason to believe their opinions 
and inclinations in that respect are various, exactly like those 
of other men ; and, if they lean more to the Crown than I and 
than many of you think we ought, we must remember that he 
who aims at another's life is not to be surprised, if he flies into 
any sanctuary that will receive him. The tenderness of the ex- 
ecutive power is the natural asylum of those upon whom the 
laws have declared war ; and to complain that men are inclined 
to favour the means of their own safety is so absurd, that one 
forgets the injustice in the ridicule. 

I must fairly tell you that, so far as my principles are con- 
cerned, (principles that I hope will only depart with my last 
breath,) I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with hon- 
esty and justice. Nor do I believe that any good constitutions 
of government, or of freedom, can find it necessary for their 
security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. 
Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in effect no 
more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest fac- 
tion ; and factions in republics have been, and are, full as capa- 
ble as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice. It 
is but too true, that the love, and even the very idea, of genuine 
liberty is extremely rare. It is but too true that there are 
many whose whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, per- 
verseness, and insolence. They feel themselves in a state of 
thraldom, they imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined 
in, unless they have some man or some body of men dependent. 






148 BURKE. 

on their mercy. This desire of having some one below them 
descends to those who are the very lowest of all ; and a Protest- 
ant cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share 
of the ruling Church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his gener- 
osity alone that the peer whose footman's instep he measures 
is able to keep his chaplain from a jail. This disposition is the 
true source of the passion which many men in very humble life 
have taken to the American war. Our subjects in America ; our 
colonies ; our dependents. This lust of party power is the lib- 
erty they hunger and thirst for ; and this Siren song of ambition 
has charmed ears that one would have thought were never 
organized to that sort of music. 

This way of proscribing the citizens by denominations and general 
descriptions, dignified by the name of reason of State, and secu- 
rity for constitutions and commonwealths, is nothing better at 
bottom than the miserable invention of an ungenerous ambition 
which would fain hold the sacred trust of power, without any 
of the virtues or any of the energies that give a title to it,— -a 
receipt of policy, made up of a detestable compound of malice, 
cowardice, and sloth. They would govern men against their 
will ; but in that government they would be discharged from 
the exercise of vigilance, providence, and fortitude ; and there- 
fore, that they may sleep on their watch, they consent to take 
some one division of the society into partnership of the tyranny 
over the rest. But let government, in what form it may be, 
comprehend the whole in its justice, and restrain the suspicious 
by its vigilance, — let it keep watch. and ward, — let it discover 
by its sagacity, and punish by its firmness, all delinquency 
against its power, whenever delinquency exists in the overt 
acts, — and then it will be as safe as ever God and Mature in- 
tended it should be. Crimes are the acts of individuals, and 
not of denominations: and therefore arbitrarily to class men 
under general descriptions, in order to proscribe and punish 
them in the lump for a presumed delinquency, of which perhaps 
but a part, perhaps none at all, are guilty, is indeed a compendi- 
ous method, and saves a world of trouble about proof ; but such 
a method, instead of being law, is an act of unnatural rebellion 
against the legal dominion of reason and justice ; and this vice, 
in any constitution that entertains it, at one time or other will 
certainly bring on its ruin. 

"We are told that this is not a religious persecution ; and its 
abettors are loud in disclaiming all severities on account of con- 
science. Yery fine indeed! Then let it be so: they are not per- 
secutors ; they are only tyrants. With all my heart. I am 
perfectly indifferent concerning the pretexts upon which we 
torment one another,— or whether it be for the Constitution of 






SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 140 

the Church of England, or for the Constitution of the State of 
England, that people choose to make their fellow-creatures 
wretched. When we were* sent into a place of authority, you 
that sent us had yourselves but one commission to give. You 
could give us none to wrong or oppress, or even to suffer any 
kind of oppression or wrong, on any grounds whatsoever: not 
on political, as in the affairs of America ; not on commercial, as 
in those of Ireland ; not in civil, as in the laws for debt ; not in 
religious7as in the statutes against Protestant or Catholic dis- 
senters. The diversified but connected fabric of universal jus- 
tice is well cramped and bolted together in all its parts ; and, 
depend upon it, I never have employed, and I never shall em- 
ploy, any engine of power which may come into my hands to 
wrench it asunder. All shall stand, if I can help it, and all 
shall stand connected. After all, to complete this work, much 
remains to be done; much in the East, much in the West. But, 
great as the work is, if our will be ready, our powers are not 
deficient. 

Since you have suffered me to trouble you so much on this 
subject, permit me, Gentlemen, to detain you a little longer. 
I am indeed most solicitous to give you perfect satisfaction. I 
find there are some of a better and softer nature than the per- 
sons with whom I have supposed myself in debate, who neither 
think ill of the Act of relief, nor by any means desire the 
repeal ; yet who, not accusing, but lamenting, what was done, 
on account of the consequences, have frequently expressed 
their wish that the late Act had never been made. Some of 
this description, and persons of worth, I have met with in this 
city. They conceive that the prejudices, whatever they might 
be, of a large part of the people, ought not to have been 
shocked ; that their opinions ought to have been previously 
taken, and much attended to ; and that thereby the late horrid 
scenes might have been prevented. 

I confess, my notions are widely different ; and I never was 
less sorry for any action of my life. I like the bill the better on 
account of the events of all kinds that followed it. It relieved 
the real sufferers ; it strengthened the State ; and, by the 
disorders that ensued, we had clear evidence that there lurked 
a temper somewhere which ought not to be fostered by the 
laws. Xo ill consequences whatever could be attributed to the 
Act itself. We knew beforehand, or we were poorly instructed, 
that toleration is odious to the intolerant, freedom to oppres- 
sors, property to robbers, and all kinds and degrees of prosper- 
ity to the envious. We knew that all these kinds of men would 
gladly gratify their evil dispositions under the sanction of law 
and religion, if they could: if they could not, yet, to make way 



150 BURKE. 

to their objects, they would do their utmost to subvert all re- 
ligion and all law. This we certainly knew. But, knowing 
this, is there any reason, because thieves break in and steal, 
and thus bring detriment to you, and draw ruin on themselves, 
that I am to be sorry that you are in possession of shops, and of 
warehouses, and of wholesome laws to protect them? Are 
you to build no houses, because desperate men may pull them 
down upon their own heads? Or, if a malignant wretch will 
cut his own throat, because he sees you give alms to the neces- 
sitous and deserving, shall his destruction be attributed to your 
charity, and not to his own deplorable madness ? If we repent 
of our good actions, what, I pray you, is left for our faults and 
follies ? It is not the beneficence of the laws, it is the unnatu- 
ral temper which beneficence can fret and sour, that is to be 
lamented. It is this temper which, by all rational means, ought 
to be sweetened and corrected. If froward men should refuse 
this cure, can they vitiate any thing but themselves ? Does evil 
so react upon good, as not only to retard its motion, but to 
change its nature? If it can so operate, then good men will 
always be in the power of the bad ; and virtue, by a dreadful 
reverse of order, must lie under perpetual subjection and bond- 
age to vice. 

As to the opinion of the people, which some think, in such 
cases, is to be implicitly obeyed, — near two years' tranquillity, 
which followed the Act, and its instant imitation in Ireland, 
proved abundantly that the late horrible spirit was in a great 
measure the effect of insidious art, and perverse industry, and 
gross misrepresentation. But suppose that the dislike had 
been much more deliberate and much more general than I am 
persuaded it was, — when we know that the opinions of even 
the greatest multitudes^ are the standard of rectitude, I shall 
think myself obliged to make those opinions the masters of my 
conscience. But if it may be doubted whether Omnipotence it- 
self is competent to alter the essential constitution of right and 
wrong, sure I am that such things as they and I are possessed of 
no such power. ]So man carries further than I do the policy of 
making government pleasing to the people. But the widest 
range of this politic complaisance is confined within the limits 
of justice. I. would not only consult the interest of the people, 
but I would cheerfully gratify their humours. We are all a 
sort of children that must be soothed and managed. I think I 
am not austere or formal in my nature. I would bear, I would 
even myself play my part in. any innocent buffooneries, to di- 
vert them. But I never will act the tyrant for their amuse- 
ment. If they will mix malice in their sports, I shall never con- 






SPEECH TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL. 151 

sent to throw them any living, sentient creature whatsoever, 
no, not so much as a kitling, to torment. 

But, if I profess all this impolitic stubbornness, I may 
chance never to be elected into Parliament? — It is certainly 
not pleasing to be put out of the public service. But I wish to 
be a member of Parliament to have my share of doing good 
and resisting evil. It would therefore be absurd to renounce 
my objects in order to obtain my seat. I deceive myself indeed 
most grossly, if I had not much rather pass the remainder of 
my life hidden in the recesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding 
my mind even with the visions and imaginations of such things, 
than to be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, 
tantalized with a denial of the practice of all which can make 
the greatest situation any other than the greatest curse. Gen- 
tlemen, I have had my day. I can never sufficiently express 
my gratitude to you for having set me in a place wherein I 
could lend the slightest help to great and laudable designs. 
If I have had my share in any measure giving quiet to private 
property and private conscience ; if by my vote I have aided in 
securing to families the best possession, peace ; if I have 
joined in reconciling kings to their subjects, and subjects to 
their prince ; if I have assisted to loosen the foreign holdings 
of the citizen, and taught him to look for his protection to 
the laws of his country, and for his comfort to the good- will of 
his countrymen ; — if I have thus taken my part with the best 
of men in the best of their actions, I can shut the book: I might 
wish to read a page or two more, but this is enough for my 
measure. I have not lived in vain. 

And now, Gentlemen, on this serious day, when I come, as it 
were, to make up my account with you, let me take to myself 
some degree of honest pride on the nature of the charges that 
are against me. I do not here stand before you accused of 
venality, or of neglect of duty. It is not said that, in the long 
period of my service, I have, in a single instance, sacrificed the 
slightest of your interests to my ambition or to my fortune. It 
is not alleged that, to gratify any anger or revenge of my own, 
or of my party, I have had a share in wronging or oppressing 
any description of men, or any one man in any description. 
No! the charges against me are all of one kind; that I have 
pushed the principles of general justice and benevolence too 
far, — further than a cautious policy would warrant, and further 
than the opinions of many would go along with me. In every 
accident which may happen through life, in pain, in sorrow, in 
depression, and distress, I will call to mind this accusation, and 
be comforted. 



152 BURKE. 

Gentlemen, I submit the whole to your judgment. Mr. May- 
or, I thank you for the trouble you have taken on this occasion : 
in your state of health it is particularly obliging. If this com- 
pany should think it advisable for me to withdraw, I shall re- 
spectfully retire ; if you think otherwise, I shall go directly to 
the Council-House and to the 'Change, and without a moment's 
delay begin my canvass. 6 



GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN TRADE. 

The trade with America alone is now within less than 
£500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial nation, 
England, carried on at the beginning of this century with the 
whole world! But, it will be said, is not this American trade 
an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the 
rest of the body? The reverse. It is the very food that has 
nourished every other part into its present magnitude. Our 
general trade has been greatly augmented, and augmented more 
or less in almost every part to which it ever extended, but with 
this material difference, — that, of the six millions which in the 
beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our ex- 
port commerce, the colony trade was but one twelfth part ; it is 
now (as a part of sixteen millions) considerably more than a 
third of the whole. This is the relative proportion of the im- 
portance of the colonies at these two periods; and all reasoning 
concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion 
as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten, and sophistical. 

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this 
great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand 

G Immediately after the close of this speech, a large meeting of Burke's 
friends was held in the Guildhall, with the Mayor in the chair, and resolutions 
were passed, declaring that he had done " all possible honour to himself as a sen- 
ator and a man," heartily approving his parliamentary course in all its parts, 
and earnestly requesting him to offer himself again as a candidate, with assur- 
ances of their cordial and full support. Thereupon he proceeded with the can- 
vass for three days; and on the 0th, being satisfied that he should not win, he 
m,ade another brief speech, calmly declining the election, and withdrawing from 
the poll. One of the candidates, a Mr. Coombe, having suddenly died, he spoke 
of the circumstance as follows: "Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday 
reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the 
objects of ordinary ambition. The Avorthy gentleman who has been snatched 
from U3 at the moment of the election, and in the middle, of the contest, whilst 
his desires Avere as Avarm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us 
what shadows Ave aro and Avhat shadoAvs Ave pursue." 



GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN TRADE. 153 

where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. 
Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, 
however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect 
that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within 
the short period of the life of man. It has happened within 
sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might 
touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst 
might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 
of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He 
was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quae, sit potent 
cognoscere virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious 
youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the 
most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, 
had opened to him in vision that, when, in the fourth genera- 
tion, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve 
years on the throne of that nation which (by the happy issue of 
moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, 7 
he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back 
the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him 
to an higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with 
a new one ; if, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domes- 
tic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the 
curtain, and, unfolding the rising glories of his country, and 
whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial 
grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little 
speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small 
seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell 
him,— "Young man, there is America, — which at this day 
serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage 
men and uncouth manners ; yet shall, before you taste of death, 
show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now at- 
tracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been 
growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought 
in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests 
and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred 
years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the 
course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been 
foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity 
of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him 
believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate 
indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, 
and cloud the setting of his day! — Speech on Conciliation with 
America, 1775. 

7 The parliamentary union of England and Scotland took place within the 
period in question. 






154 BUBKE. 



CHAEACTEE OF GEOEGE GEENVILLE. 8 

No man can believe that, at this time of day, I mean to lean 
on the venerable memory of a great man, whose loss we deplore 
in common. Our little party differences have been long ago 
composed ; and I have acted more with him, and certainly with 
more pleasure with him, than ever I acted against him. Un- 
doubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. 
"With a masculine understanding and a stout and resolute heart, 
he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took 
public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a 
pleasure he was to enjoy ; and he seemed to have no delight 
out of this House, except in such things as some way related to 
the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambi- 
tious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and 
generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low, pimp- 
ing politics of a Court, but to win his way to power through the 
laborious gradations of public service, and to secure himself a 
well-earned rank in Parliament by a thorough knowledge of its 
constitution and a perfect practice in all its business. 

Sir, if such a man fell into errors, it must be from defects not 
intrinsical ; they must be rather sought in the particular habits 
of his life, which, though they do not alter the groundwork of 
character, yet tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a 
profession. He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, 
one of the first and noblest of human sciences, — a science which 
does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all 
the other kinds of learning put together ; but it is not apt, ex- 
cept in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize the 
mind exactly in the same proportion. Passing from that study, 
he did not go very largely into the world, but plunged into busi- 
ness, — I mean into the business of office, and the limited and 
fixed methods and forms established there. Much knowledge 
is to be had, undoubtedly, in that line ; and there is no knowl- 
edge which is not valuable. But it may be truly said, that men 

8 Grenville became a member of the Bute Ministry in 1761, and bore a lead- 
ing, perhaps I should say the leading, part in framing and carrying through the 
scheme of American policy which issued in the revolt, and finally in the inde- 
pendence of the colonies. As the cap-stone of this policy, in February, 1785, he 
moved upwards of fifty resolutions in the House of Commons, the fatal Stamp 
Act being among them. Burke, though not then a member of Parliament, was 
from the outset utterly opposed to that policy in all its parts; and, under the 
first Rockingham administration, in 176G, he did his part in procuring a repeal of 
the Acts passed in pursuance of it. — Grenville was a brother of Earl Temple, 
and died in November, 1770. 



CHATHAM AND TOWNSHEXD. 155 

too much conversant in office are rarely minds of remarkable 
enlargement. Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn 
to think the substance of business not to be much more import- 
ant than the forms in which it is conducted. These forms are 
adapted to ordinary occasions; and therefore persons who are 
nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in 
their common order; but when the high-roads are broken up, and 
the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and 
the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge 
of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things 
is requisite, than ever office gave, or than office can ever give. 
Mr. Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of hu- 
man legislation than in truth it deserves. He conceived, and 
many conceived along with him, that the flourishing trade of 
this country was greatly owing to law and institution, and not 
quite so much to liberty ; for but too many are apt to believe 
regulation to be commerce, and taxes to be revenue. — Speech 
on American Taxation, 1774. 



LOED CHATHAM AND CHAELES TOWNSHEND. 9 

I have done with the third period of your policy, — that of 
your repeal, and the return of your ancient system, and your 
ancient tranquillity and concord. Sir, this period was not as 
long as it was happy. Another scene was opened, and other 
actors appeared on the stage. The State, in the condition I 
have described it, was delivered into the hands of Lord Chat- 
ham, a great and celebrated name, — a name that keeps the 
name of this country respectable in every other on the globe. 
It may be truly called 

Clarum et venerabile nomen 
Gentibus, et multum nostra? quod proderat urbi. 

Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his 
superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, 
the vast space he fills in the eye of mankind, and, more than all 

9 The Rockingham Ministry continued in office something less than thirteen 
months, when Pitt "was again called to the helm, and, for his Ministry, got up the 
rickety piece of patchwork which Burke here so vividly describes, Townshend 
being Chancellor of the Exchequer. In May, 1767, the ill-starred legislation so 
lately repealed was in substance revived, Townshend acting as chief engineer 
in the revival. That Ministry came to an end the Summer following, and 
Townshend died soon after. 







156 BURKE. 

the rest, his fall from power, which, like death, canonizes and 
sanctifies a great character, will not suffer me to censure any 
part of his conduct. I am afraid to flatter him ; I am sure I am 
not disposed to blame him. Let those who have betrayed him 
by their adulation insult him with their malevolence. But 
what I do not presume to censure I may have leave to lament. 
For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time to be governed 
too much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of 
history, and I hope without offence. One or two of these 
maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our 
unhappy species, and surely a little too general, led him into 
measures that were greatly mischievous to himself, and for that 
reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country, — measures, 
the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He 
made an administration so checkered and speckled, he put to- 
gether a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically 
dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversi- 
fied mosaic, such a tessellated pavement without cement, — here 
a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white, patriots and cour- 
tiers, King's friends and republicans, Whigs and Tories, treach- 
erous friends and open enemies, — that it was, indeed, a very 
curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand 
on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards 
stared at each other, and were obliged to ask,— "Sir, your 
name?" — "Sir, you have the advantage of me."— "Mr. Such- 
a-one." — "I beg a thousand pardons." — I venture to say, it did 
so happen that persons had a single office divided between them, 
who had never spoken to each other in their lives, until they 
found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads 
and points, in the same truckle-bed. 

Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so much 
the larger part of his enemies and opposers into power, the 
confusion was such that his own principles could not possibly 
have any effect or influence in the conduct of affairs. If ever 
he fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other cause withdrew him 
from public cares, principles directly the contrary were sure to 
predominate. When he had executed his plan, he had not an 
inch of ground to stand upon. W T hen he had accomplished his 
scheme of administration, he was no longer Minister. 

When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system was 
on a wide sea without chart or compass. The gentlemen, his 
particular friends, who, with the names of various departments 
of Ministry, were admitted to seem as if they acted a part under 
him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a confi- 
dence in him which was justified even in its extravagance by 
his superior abilities, had never in any instance presumed upon 



CHATHAM AND TOWKSHE^D. 157 

any opinion of their own. Deprived of Ms guiding influence, 
they were whirled about, the sport of every gust, and easily 
driven into any port ; and as those who joined with them in 
manning the vessel were the most directly opposite to his 
opinions, measures, and character, and far the most arlful and 
most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed, so as to seize 
upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends, 
and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of 
his policy. As if it were to insult as well as to betray him, even 
long before the close of the first session of his administration, 
when every thing was publicly transacted, and with great 
parade, in his name, they made an Act declaring it highly just 
and expedient to raise a revenue in America. For even then, 
Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely set, and while 
the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, 
on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, 
and for his hour became lord of the ascendant. 

This light, too, is passed and set for ever. You understand, 
to be sure, that I speak of Charles Townshend, officially the 
reproducer of this fatal scheme, whom I cannot even now 
remember without some degree of sensibility. In truth, Sir, 
he was the delight and ornament of this House, and the charm 
of every private society which he honoured with his presence. 
Perhaps there never arose in this country, nor in any country, 
a man of a more pointed and finished wit, and (where his pas- 
sions were not concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, and 
penetrating judgment. If lie had not so great a stock as some 
have had, who flourished formerly, of knowledge long treasured 
up, he knew, better by far than any man I ever was acquainted 
with, how to bring together within a short time all that was 
necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of 
the question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and 
powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most luminous 
explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument 
was neither trite and vulgar nor subtile and abstruse. He hit 
the House just between wind and water. And, not being 
troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he 
was never more tedious or more earnest than the preconceived 
opinions and present temper of his hearers required, to whom 
he was always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly to the 
temper of the House ; and he seemed to guide, because he was 
always sure to follow it. 

I beg pardon, Sir, if, when I speak of this and of ether great 
men, I appear to digress in saying something of their characters. 
In this eventful history of the revolutions of America, the char- 
acters of such men are of much importance. Great men are the 



158 BURKE. 

guideposts and landmarks in the State. The credit of such men 
at Court or in the nation is the sole cause of all the public 
measures. It would be an invidious thing (most foreign, I 
trust, to what you think my disposition) to remark the errors 
into which the authority of great names has brought the nation, 
without doing justice at the same time to the great qualities 
whence that authority arose. The subject is instructive to 
those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence 
has gone before them. There are many young members in the 
House (such of late has been the rapid succession of public 
men) who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend, nor of 
course know what a ferment he was able to excite in every- 
thing by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. 
For failings he had undoubted^, — many of us remember them: 
we are this day considering the effect of them. But he had no 
failings which were not owing to a noble cause, — to an ardent, 
generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame ; a passion 
which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that god- 
dess, wheresoever she appeared ; but he paid his particular de- 
votions to her in her favourite habitation, in her chosen temple, 
the House of Commons. Besides the characters of the individ- 
uals who compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not 
to observe that this House has a collective character of its own. 
That character, too, however imperfect, is not unamiable. Like 
all great public collections of men, you possess a marked love 
of virtue and an abhorrence of vice. But among vices there is 
none which the House abhors in the same degree with obstinacy. 
Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice ; and in the changeful 
state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mis- 
chief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost 
the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy, 
gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, are 
closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so 
just an abhorrence ; and, in their excess, all these virtues very 
easily fall into it. He who paid such a punctilious attention to 
all your feelings certainly took care not to shock them by that 
vice which is the most disgustful to you. — Speech on American 
Taxation. 



STATE OF THIKGS IIS" FRANCE. 159 



STATE OF THINGS IN FEANCE. 10 

Since the House had been prorogued in the Summer, much 
work was done in France. The French had shown themselves 
the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the 
world. In that very short space of time they had completely 
pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their Church, their 
nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their 
commerce, their arts, and their manufactures. They had done 
their business for us as rivals, in a way in which twenty Ea- 
millies or Blenheims could never have done it. Were we abso- 
lute conquerors, and France to lie prostrate at our feet, we 
should be ashamed to send a commission to settle their affairs, 
which could impose so hard a law upon the French, and so de- 
structive of all their consequence as a nation, as that they had 
imposed on themselves. 

In the last age we were in danger of being entangled by the 
example of France in the net of a relentless despotism. It is 
not necessary to say any thing upon that example. It exists no 
longer. Our present clanger from the example of a people, 
whose character knows no medium, is, with regard to govern- 
ment, a danger from anarchy ; a danger of being led, through 
an admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation 
of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, 
confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical de- 
mocracy. On the side of religion, the danger of their example 
is no longer from intolerance, but from atheism ; a foul, unnat- 
ural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind ; 
which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied 
into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed. 

He was so strongly opposed to any the least tendency towards 
the means of introducing a democracy like theirs, as well as to 
the end itself, that he would abandon his best friends, and join 
with his worst enemies, to oppose either the means or the end ; 
and to resist all violent exertions of the spirit of innovation, so 

10 Tho following paragraphs are a portion of what is entitled, in full, "Sub- 
stance of the Speech, in the Debate on the Army Estimates, in the House of 
Commons, on Tuesday, the 9th day of February, 1790; comprehending a Discus- 
sion of the present Condition of Affairs in France. 1790." Up to that time, the 
current of avowed feeling in Parliament seemed to be setting rather in favour of 
tho doings in France. Fox, especially, had spoken enthusiastically in praise of 
them. Burke's speech was the first note of decided opposition to the new opin- 
ions : it took the House quite by surprise, and produced a very great impression. 
At first he was heard with mute astonishment; but as he went on the applause 
became loud and frequent; and when he got through, it was pretty evident that 
Old England'? mighty heart was with him See the next note. 



160 BUEKE. 

distant from all principles of true and safe reformation,— a 
spirit well calculated to overturn States, but perfectly unfit to 
amend them.— He was no enemy to reformation. Almost every 
business in which he was much concerned, from the first day he 
sat in that House to that hour, was a business of reformation ; 
and when he had not been employed in correcting, he had been 
employed in resisting, abuses. Some traces of this spirit in him 
now stand on their statute-book. In his opinion, any thing 
which unnecessarily tore to pieces the contexture of the State 
not only prevented all real reformation, but introduced evils 
which would call, but perhaps call in vain, for new reformation. 

The French have made their way, through the destruction of 
their country, to a bad constitution, when they were absolutely 
in possession of a good one. They were in possession of it the 
day the states met in separate orders. Their business, had they 
been either virtuous or wise, or had they been left to their own 
judgment, was to secure the stability and independence of the 
states, according to those orders, under the monarch on the 
throne. It was then their duty to redress grievances. 

Instead of redressing grievances, and improving the fabric of 
their State, to which they were called by their monarch, and 
sent by their country, they were made to take a very different 
course. They first destroyed all the balances and counterpoises 
which serve to fix the State, and to give it a steady direction ; 
and which furnish sure correctives to any violent spirit which 
may prevail in any of the orders. These balances existed in 
their oldest Constitution ; and in the Constitution of this coun- 
try ; and in the Constitutions of all the countries of Europe. 
These they rashly destroyed, and then they melted down the 
whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass. 

When they had done this, they instantly, and with the most 
atrocious perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the 
axe to the root of all property, and consequently of all national 
prosperity, by the principles they established, and the example 
they set, in confiscating all the possessions of the Church. 
They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, 
called the rights of man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary 
principles as would have disgraced boys at school: but this 
declaration of rights was worse than trifling and pedantic in 
them ; as by their name and authority they systematically 
destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, 
on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they sub- 
verted the State ; and brought on such calamities as no country, 
without a long war, has ever been known to suffer ; and which 
may in the end produce such a Avar, and perhaps many such. 

With them the question was not between despotism and lib. 



STATE OF THIKGS IK" FKAKCE. 161 

erty. The sacrifice they made of the peace and power of their 
country was not made on the altar of freedom. Freedom, and 
a better security for freedom than that they have taken, they 
might have had without any sacrifice at all. They brought 
themselves into all the calamities they suffer, not that through 
them they might obtain a British Constitution ; they plunged 
themselves headlong into those calamities, to prevent them- 
selves from settling into that Constitution, or into any thing 
resembling it. 

The worst effect of all their proceeding was on their military, 
which was rendered an army for every purpose but that of de- 
fence. It was not an army in corps and with discipline, and 
embodied under the respectable patriot citizens of the State in 
resisting tyranny. Nothing like it. It was the case of common 
soldiers deserting from their officers, to join a furious, licen- 
tious populace. It was a desertion to a cause, the real object 
of which was to level all those institutions, and to break all 
those connections, natural and civil, that regulate and hold to- 
gether the community by a chain of subordination ; to raise 
soldiers against their officers ; servants against their masters ; 
tradesmen against their customers ; artificers against their em- 
ployers ; tenants against their landlords ; curates against their 
bishops ; and children against their parents. That this cause 
of theirs was not an enemy to servitude, but to society. 

He knew too well, and he felt as much as any man, how diffi- 
cult it was to accommodate a standing army to a free constitu- 
tion, or to any constitution. An armed disciplined body is, in 
its essence, dangerous to liberty ; undisciplined, it is ruinous to 
society. Its component parts are, in the latter case, neither 
good citizens nor good soldiers. What have they thought of in 
France, under such a difficulty as almost puts the human facul- 
ties to a stand ? They have put their army under such a variety 
of principles of duty, that it is more likely to breed litigants, 
pettifoggers, and mutineers, than soldiers. They have set up, 
to balance their Crown army, another army, deriving under an- 
other authority, called a municipal army, — a balance of armies 
not of orders. These latter they have destroyed with every 
mark of insult and oppression. States may, and they will best, 
exist with a partition of civil powers. Armies cannot exist 
under a divided command. This state of things he thought, in 
effect, a state of war, or, at best, but a truce instead of peace, in 
the country. 

He felt some concern that this strange thing, called a revolu- 
tion, in France, should be compared with the glorious event 
commonly called the Eevolution in England; and the conduct 
of the soldiery, on that occasion, compared with the behaviour 



162 BUEKE. 

of some of the troops of France in the present instance. At 
that period the Prince of Orange, a prince of the blood-royal in 
England, was called in by the flower of the English aristocracy 
to defend its ancient Constitution, and not to level all distinc- 
tions. To this prince, so invited, the aristocratic leaders who 
commanded the troops went over with their several corps, in 
bodies, to the deliverer of their country. Aristocratic leaders 
brought up the corps of citizens who newly enlisted in this 
cause. Military obedience changed its object ; but military dis- 
cipline was not for a moment interrupted in its principle. The 
troops were ready for war, but indisposed to mutiny. 

But as the conduct of the English armies was different, so 
was that of the whole English nation at that time. In truth, 
the circumstances of our revolution (as it is called) and that of 
France are just the reverse of each other in almost every par- 
ticular, and in the whole spirit of the transaction. With us it 
was the case of a legal monarch attempting arbitrary power ; in 
France it is the case of an arbitrary monarch, beginning, from 
whatever cause, to legalize his authority. The one was to be 
resisted, the other was to be managed and directed ; but in 
neither case was the order of the State to be changed, lest gov- 
ernment might be ruined, which ought only to be corrected and 
legalized. With us we got rid of the man, and preserved the 
constituent parts of the State. There they get rid of the con- 
stituent parts of the State, and keep the man. "What we did 
was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, a rev- 
olution, not made, but prevented. We took solid securities ; 
we settled doubtful questions ; M r e corrected anomalies in our 
law. In the stable, fundamental parts of our Constitution we 
made no revolution ; no, nor any alteration at all. We did not 
impair the monarchy. Perhaps it might be shown that we 
strengthened it very considerably. The nation kept the same 
ranks, the same orders, the same privileges, the same franchises, 
the same rules for property, the same subordinations, the same 
order in the law, in the revenue, and in the magistracy ; the 
same Lords, the same Commons, the same corporations, the 
same electors. 

The Church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her 
splendour, her orders and gradations, continued the same. She 
was preserved in her full efficiency, and cleared only of a cer- 
tain intolerance which was her weakness and disgrace. The 
Church and the State were the same after the Kevolution that 
they were before, but better secured in every part. 

Was little done because a revolution was not made in the 
Constitution ? No! Every thing was done, because we com- 
menced with reparation, not with ruin. Accoi*dingly the State 



THE REVOLUTION" IN" FRANCE. 163 

flourished. Instead of lying as dead, in a sort of trance, or ex- 
posed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to the pity or derision 
of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive movements, 
impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains 
against the pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard 
even of her former self. An era of a more improved domestic 
prosperity then commenced, and still continues not only unim- 
paired, but growing, under the wasting hand of time. All the 
energies of the country were awakened. England never pre- 
sented a firmer countenance, nor a more vigorous arm, to all her 
enemies and to all her rivals. Europe under her respired and 
revived. Everywhere she appeared as the protector, assertor, 
or avenger of liberty. A war was made and supported against 
fortune itself. The treaty of Ryswick, which first limited the 
power of France, was soon after made : the Grand Alliance very 
shortly followed, which shook to the foundations the dreadful 
power which menaced the independence of mankind. The 
States of Europe lay happy under the shade of a great a*id free 
monarchy, which knew how to be great without endangering its 
own peace at home, or the internal or external peace of any of 
its neighbours. 



THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 11 

I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and 
prophetic ejaculation, commonly called Nunc Dimiitis, made on 

II The pages that follow under- this heading are from Burke's great paper, 
published in the Fall of 1790, its full title being, " Reflections on the Revolution 
in France, and on the Proceedings of certain Societies in London relative to that 
Event: in a Letter intended to have been sent to a Gentleman in Paris." Thi3 
French "Gentleman" was M. Pupont, who had visited Burke at Beaconsfield, 
and earnestly requested an expression of his judgment on the subject in ques- 
tion. The great moral and social earthquake, known as the French Revolution, 
dates from the Spring of 1789. One of the Societies here referred to was " The 
Revolution Society," working in sympathy and correspondence with the leaders 
of the movement in France, and wishing to bring about a similar upheaving in 
England. On the 4th of November, 1789, Dr. Richard Price, an eminent dissent- 
ing minister, an amiable and benevolent man, and justly distinguished for his 
scientific attainments, preached a sermon at the meeting-house of Old Jewry, in 
furtherance of the cause ; the worthy man being put so far beside himself by the 
prevailing delirium and frenzy, as to commit the extravagance here commented 
on so severely. Burke watched the progress of things in France with the in- 
tensest interest, his mind all the while growing bigger and bigger with the 
theme, till at last it broke forth in this overwhelming torrent of eloquence and 
wisdom, which soon swept away whatever chances there may have been of 
getting up a French Revolution in England. 



1G4: BUEKE. 

the first presentation of our Saviour in the Temple, and apply- 
ing it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most 
horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was 
exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This leading 
in triumph, a thing in its best form unmanly and irreligious, 
which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must 
shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind. 
Several English were the stupefied and indignant spectators of 
that triumph. It was (unless we have been strangely deceived) 
a spectacle more resembling a procession of American savages, 
entering into Onondaga, after some of their murders, called vic- 
tories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their cap- 
tives, overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of women as 
ferocious as themselves, much more than it resembled the tri- 
umphal pomp of a civilized, martial nation; — if a civilized na- 
tion, or any men who had. a sense of generosity, were capable of 
a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted. 

This, -my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France. I must 
believe that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you with shame and 
horror. I must believe that the ^National Assembly find them- 
selves in a state of the greatest humiliation in not being able to- 
punish the authors of this triumph, or the actors in it ; and that 
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they may make 
upon the subject must be destitute even of the appearance of 
liberty or impartiality. The apology of that Assembly is found 
in their situation ; but when we approve what they must bear, 
it is in us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind. 

With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they vote under 
the dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it 
were, of a foreign republic: they have their residence in a city 
whose constitution has emanated neither from the charter of 
their King nor from their legislative power. There they are 
surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority of 
their Crown or by their command ; and which, if they should 
order it to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them. There 
they sit, after a gang of assassins had driven away some hun- 
dreds of the members ; whilst those who held the same moder- 
ate principles, with more patience or better hope, continued 
every day exposed to outrageous insults and murderous threats. 
There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes pretended, captive 
itself, compels a captive King to issue as royal edicts, at third 
hand, the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy 
coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their measures are de- 
cided before they are debated. It is beyond doubt, that, under 
the terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the torch to 
their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desper- 






THE EETOLUTIOK IK FEANCE. 165 

ate measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous 
medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations. Among tliese 
are found persons, in comparison of whom Catiline would be 
thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man of sobriety and mod- 
eration. Eor is it in these clubs alone that the public measures 
are deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous distor- 
tion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these 
clubs, which are set up in all the places of public resort. In 
these meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is 
daring and violent and perfidious, is taken for the mark of supe- 
rior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the 
fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals 
is considered as treason to the public. Liberty is always to be 
estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst as- 
sassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated cr medi- 
tated, they are forming j)lans for the good order of future soci- 
ety. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, 
and promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they 
drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing 
them to subsist by beggary or by crime. 

The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of 
deliberation with as little decency as liberty. They act like the 
comedians of a fair before a riotous audience ; they act amidst 
the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of 
women lost to shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, 
direct, control, applaud, explode them ; and sometimes mix 
and take their seats amongst them ; domineering over them 
with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, pre- 
sumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in all things, 
the gallery is in the place of the House. This Assembly, 
which overthrows kings and kingdoms, has not even the physi- 
ognomy and aspect of a grave legislative body, — nee color 
imperii, nee frons ulla senatus. 1 They have a power given to 
them, like that of the evil principle, to subvert and destroy ; but 
none to construct, except such machines as may be fitted for 
further subversion and further destruction. 

Who is there that admires, and from the heart is attached to, 
national representative assemblies, but must turn with horror 
and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable 
perversion of that sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, 
lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your 
Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny of which 
they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the 

1 Neither any character of command nor the slightest aspect or countenance 
of a senate. 



166 BURKE. 

profit. I am sure many of the members who compose even the 
majority of that body must feel as I do, notwithstanding the 
applauses of the Revolution Society. Miserable King ! misera- 
ble Assembly ! Plow must that Assembly be silently scandal- 
ized with those of their members who could call a day, which 
seemed to blot the Sun out of heaven, un beau jour!' 2 How 
must they be inwardly indignant at hearing others, who 
thought fit to declare t3 them, "that the vessel of the State 
would fly forward in her course towards regeneration with 
more speed than ever," from the stiff gale of treason and 
murder which preceded our preacher's triumph ! What must 
they have felt, whilst, with outward patience and inward 
indignation, they heard of the slaughter of innocent gentlemen 
in their houses, that "the blood spilt was not the most pure !" 
What must they have felt, when they were besieged by com- 
plaints of disorders which shook their country to its founda- 
tions, at being compelled coolly to tell the complainants that 
they were under the protection of the law, and that they would 
address the King (the captive King) to cause the laws to be 
enforced for their protection ; when the enslaved Ministers of 
that captive King had formally notified to them, that there was 
neither law, nor authority, nor power left to protect ! What 
must they have felt at being obliged, as a felicitation on the 
present new year, to request their captive King to forget the 
stormy period of the last, on account of the great good which 
he was likely to produce to his people ; to the complete attain- 
ment of which good they adjourned the practical demonstra- 
tions of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience, when he 
should no longer possess any authority to command ! 

This address was made with, much good-nature and affection, 
to be sure. But among the revolutions in France must be 
reckoned a considerable revolution in their ideas of politeness. 
In England we are said to learn manners at second-hand from 
your side of the water, and that we dress our behaviour in the 
frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old cut ; and have 
not so far conformed to the new Parisian mode of good breed- 
ing, as to think it quite in the most refined strain of delicate 
compliment (whether in condolence or congratulation) to say, 
to the most humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, 
that great public benefits are derived from the murder of his 
servants, the attempted assassination of himself and of his 
wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and degradation, that he 
has personally suffered. It is a topic of consolation which our 

2 This " auspicious (Lay " was the 6th of October, 17S9, when the " leading in 
triumph " took place, which is described in full a little further on. 




THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 1G7 

inary of Newgate would be too humane to use to a criminal 
at the foot of the gallows. I should have thought that the 
hangman of Faris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the 
National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and arms in the 
herald's college of the rights of men, would be too generous, 
too gallant a man, too full of the sense of his new dignity, to 
employ that cutting consolation to any of the persons whom 
the leze nation* might bring under the administration of his 
executive power. 

A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The 
anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated 
to preserve a galling wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer 
of a corroding memory. Thus to administer the opiate potion 
of amnesty, powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and 
contempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of "the balm of hurt 
minds," the cup of human misery full to the brim, and to force 
him to drink it to the dregs. 

Yielding to reasons, at least as forcible as those which were 
so delicately urged in the compliment on the new year, the 
King of France will probably endeavour to forget these events 
and that compliment. But history, who keeps a durable record 
of all our acts, and exercises her awful censure over the pro- 
ceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget either those 
events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse 
of mankind. History will record that, on the morning of the 
6th of October, 1789, the King and Queen of France, after a day 
of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under 
the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few 
hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this 
sleep the Queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel 
at her door, who cried out to her to save herself by flight ; that 
this was the last proof of fidelity he could give ; that they were 
upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A 
band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, 
rushed into the chamber of the Queen, and pierced with a 
hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from 
whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost 
naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had 
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a King and husband, not 
secure of his own life for a moment. 

This King, to say no more of him, and this Queen, and their 
infant children, (who once would have been the pride and hope 
of a great and generous people,) were then forced to abandon 
the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which 

3 Leze nation is treason against the nation. 



168 BURKE. 

they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewe( 
with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they 
were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had 
been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous 
slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and 
family who composed the King's body guard. These two 
gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were 
cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the 
great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, 
and led the procession ; whilst the royal captives who followed - 
in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, 
and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous con- 
tumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of 
Hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women. After they 
had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness 
of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, 
protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of 
those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this 
famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now 
converted into a bastile for kings. 

Js this a triumph to be consecrated at altars ? to be commem- 
orated with grateful thanksgiving ? to be offered to the Divine 
Humanity with fervent prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation? 
These Theban and Thracian orgies, acted in France, and ap- 
plauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic 
enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this king- 
dom : although a saint and apostle, who may have revelations 
of his own, and who has completely vanquished all the mean 
superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and 
decorous to compare it with the entrance into the world of the 
Prince of Peace, proclaimed in a holy temple by a venerable 
sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of 
Angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. 

At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded 
transport. I knew indeed that the sufferings of monarchs make 
a delicious repast to some sort of palates. There were reflec- 
tions which might serve to keep this appetite within some 
bounds of temperance. But, when I took one circumstance 
into my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much al- 
lowance ought to be made for the Society, and that the tempta- 
tion was too strong for common discretion: I mean, the cir- 
cumstance of the Io Psean of the triumph, the animating cry 
which called "for all the Bishops to be hanged on the lamp- 
posts," might well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on; 
the foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to so 
much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow 



THE REVOLUTION IN" FRANCE. 169 

this prophet to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgiving 
on an event which appears like the precursor of the Millennium, 
and the projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of all 
Church establishments. There was, however, (as in all human 
affairs there is,) in the midst of this joy, something to exercise 
the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long- 
suffering of their faith. The actual murder of the King and 
Queen, and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious cir- 
cumstances of this " beautiful day." The actual murder of the 
Bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was 
also wanting. A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter 
was indeed boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It un- 
happily was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the 
Massacre of Innocents. What hardy pencil of a great master, 
from the school of the rights of men, will finish it, is to be seen 
hereafter. The age has not yet the complete benefit of that 
diffusion of knowledge that has undermined superstition and 
error ; and the King of France wants another object or two to 
consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is to 
arise from his own sufferings, and the patriotic crimes of an 
enlightened age. 

Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not 
go to the length that in all probability it was intended to be 
carried, yet I must think that such treatment of any human 
creatures must be shocking to any but those who are made for 
accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced 
by the inborn feelings of my nature, and not being illuminated 
by a single ray of this new-sprung modern light, I confess to 
you, Sir, that the exalted rank of the persons suffering, and 
particularly the sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of 
the descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the ten- 
der age of royal infants, insensible only through infancy and 
innocence of the cruel outrages to- which their parents were 
exposed, instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a 
little to my sensibility on that most melancholy occasion. 

I hear that the august person, who was the principal object 
of our preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt 
much on that shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to 
feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his 
person, that were massacred in cold blood about him ; as a 
prince, it became him to feel for the strange and frightful trans- 
formation of his civilized subjects, and to be more grieved for 
them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little from his 
fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour of his human- 
ity. I am very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such per- 



170 BURKE. 

eonages are in a situation in which it is not becoming in us to 
praise the virtues of the great. 

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other ob- 
ject of the triumph, has borne that day, (one is interested that 
beings made for suffering should suffer well,) and that she bears 
all the succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her 
husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, 
and the insulting adulation of addresses, and the whole weight 
of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene patience, in a manner 
suited to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring of a 
sovereign distinguished for her piety and her courage: 4 that, 
like her, she has lofty sentiments ; that she feels with the dig- 
nity of a Roman matron ; that in the last extremity she will 
save herself from the last disgrace ; and that, if she must fall, 
she will fall by no ignoble hand. 

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of 
France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never 
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more 
delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating 
and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, — 
glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and 
joy. O, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to 
contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall ! Lit- 
tle did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of 
enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she would ever be 
obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed 
in that bosom: little did I dream that I should have lived to see 
such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a 
nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thou- 
sand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge 
even a look that threatened her with insult. 5 But the age of 
chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calcula- 
tors, has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe is extinguished 
for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous 
loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified 
obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, 
even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The 

4 Marie Antoinette, the Queen of Louis the Sixteenth, was the daughter of 
Maria Theresa, the heroic Empress of Austria. 

5 Some persons, and among them Sir Philip Francis, one of Burke's warmest 
friends, censured this famous passage, not only as containing bad doctrine, but 
as written in bad tasta. Robert Hall, the distinguished Baptist minister, a man 
of great eloquence and power, but utterly opposed to Burke's opinions, gave it 
as his judgment, that " those who could read without rapture what Burke had 
written of the unhappy Queen of France, might have merits as reasoners, but 
ought at once to resign all pretensions to be considered men of taste." 



THE REVOLUTION" IN FRANCE. 171 

unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse 
of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, 
that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt 
a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated 
ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which 
vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. 

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in 
the ancient chivalry ; and the principle, though varied in its ap- 
pearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and 
influenced through a long succession of generations, even to the 
time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the 
loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given its character 
to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it under 
all its forms of government, and distinguished it to its advan- 
tage, from the States of Asia, and possibly from those States 
which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique 
world. It was this which, without confounding ranks, had pro- 
duced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gra- 
dations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings 
into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with 
kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness 
of pride and power ; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft 
collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to 
elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to be sub- 
dued by manners. 

But now ail is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions 
which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmo- 
nized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimi- 
lation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify 
and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new con- 
quering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of 
life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, fur- 
nished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the 
heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover 
the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to 
dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, 
absurd, and antiquated fashion. 

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a 
woman ; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the 
highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, 
and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and 
folly. Eegicide and parricide and sacrilege are but fictions of 
superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplic- 
ity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, 
is only common homicide ; and if the people are by any chance, 
or in any way, gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most 



172 BURKE. 

pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a 
scrutiny. 

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the off- 
spring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is 
as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, 
laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the 
concern which each individual may find in them from his own 
private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private 
interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every 
vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which 
engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On 
the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions can 
never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons ; so 
as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. 
But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapa- 
ble of filling their place. These public affections, combined 
with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, some- 
times as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given 
by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of 
poems, is equally true as to States : Non satis est pulchra esse 
poemata, dulcia sunto. 6 There ought to be a system of manners 
in every nation, which a well-formed mind would be disposed 
to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to 
be lovely. 

But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in 
which manners and opinions perish ; and it will find other and 
worse means for its support. The usurpation which, in order 
to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, 
will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired 
it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, 
by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from 
the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of 
men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive 
murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim 
and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power, 
not standing on its own honour, and the honour of those who 
are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects 
are rebels from principle. 

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the 
loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have 
no compass to govern us ; nor can we know distinctly to what 
port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a 
flourishing condition the day on which your revolution was 
completed. How much of that prosperous state was owing to 

6 It is not enough that poems be beautiful; they must be sweet also. 



THE KEVOLUTICW Itf FEANCE. 173 

the spirit of our old manners and opinions, is not easy to say ; 
but as such causes cannot be indifferent in their operation, we 
must presume that, on the whole, their operation was beneficial. 

We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we 
find them, without sufficiently adverting to the cause by which 
they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Noth- 
ing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and 
all the good things which are connected with manners and with 
civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for 
ages upon two principles ; and were indeed the result of both 
combined ; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of 
religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, 
the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the 
midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were 
rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what 
it received to nobility and to priesthood; and paid it with usury, 
by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy 
if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union, and 
their proper place ! Happy if learning, not debauched by ambi- 
tion, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not 
aspired to be master ! Along with its natural protectors and 
guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden 
down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. 7 

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are al- 
ways willing to own to ancient manners, so do other interests 
which we value full as much as they are worth. Even com- 
merce and trade and manufacture, the gods of our economical 
politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures ; are them- 
selves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. 
They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning 
flourished. They too may decay with their natural protecting 
principles. With you, for the present at least, they all threaten 
to disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are 
wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion re- 
mains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their 
place ; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experi- 

7 Of course the author here had in mind the passage of Scripture, "Neither 
cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and 
turn again and rend you." An outcry was raised against Burke for the phrase 
swinish multitude, as if he meant to spit scorn at the common people generally. 
He meant no such thing. And the words proved prophetic, being afterwards 
fulfilled to the letter, especially in the person of M. Bailly, a man highly dis- 
tinguished for culture and liberal attainments, who took a leading part in the 
revolutionary movement, for which he was made Mayor of Paris, and who was 
among the first to be rent in pieces by the multitude before whom he had cast 
his intellectual peai-ls. This was in the Fall of 1793. 



174 buhke. 

ment to try how well a State may stand without these old fun- 
damental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of 
gross, stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time, poor and sordid 
barbarians, destitute of religion, honour, or manly pride, pos- 
sessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter? 

I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to 
that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears 
a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity, in all the 
proceedings of the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their 
liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. 
Their humanity is savage and brutal. 

It is not clear whether in England we learned those grand 
and decorous principles and manners, of which considerable 
traces yet remain, from you, or whether you took them from us. 
But to you, I think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be 
gentis incunabula nostras* France has always more or less influ- 
enced manners in England ; and when your fountain is choked 
up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, 
with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in 
my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is 
done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long 
on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have 
given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my 
mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, 
which may be dated from that day,— I mean a revolution in sen- 
timents, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, 
with every thing respectable destroyed without us, and an at- 
tempt to destroy within us every principle of respec.t, one is 
almost forced to apologize for harbouring the common feelings 
of men. 

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, 
and those of his lay flock who will choose to adopt the senti- 
ments of his discourse? Eor this plain reason,— because it is 
natural I should ; because we are so made, as to be affected at 
such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable 
condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty 
of human greatness ; because in those natural feelings we 
learn great lessons ; because in events like these our passions 
instruct our reason ; because when kings are hurled from their 
thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and 
become the objects of insult to the base, and of pity to the 
good, we behold such disasters in the moral, as we should 
behold a miracle in the physical order of things. We are 
alarmed into reflection ; our minds (as it has long since been 

8 The nursery or cradle of our nation. 



THE REYOLTJTIOH lis" FRANCE. 175 

observed) are purified by terror and pity ; our weak, unthinking 
pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious 
wisdom. Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a 
spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly 
ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of 
painted distress, whilst I could exult over it in real life. With 
such a perverted mind, I could never venture to show my face 
at a tragedy. People would think the tears that Garrick for- 
merly, or that Siddons not long since, extorted from me, were 
the tears of hypocrisy ; I should know them to be the tears 
of folly. 

Indeed the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments 
than churches, where the feelings of humanity are thus out- 
raged. Poets who have to deal with an audience not yet 
graduated in the school of the rights of men, and who must 
apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, would 
not dare to produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation. 
There, where men follow their natural impulses, they would 
not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether 
applied to the attainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny. 
They would reject them on the modern, as they once did on 
the ancient stage, where they could not bear even the hypo- 
thetical proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a 
personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he sus- 
tained. No theatric audience in Athens would bear what has 
been borne, in the midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal 
clay, — a principal actor weighing, as it were in scales hung in a 
shop of horrors, so much actual crime against so much contin- 
gent advantage, and, after putting in and out weights, declaring 
that the balance was on the side of the advantages. They 
would not bear to see the crimes of new democracy posted as in 
a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and the book- 
keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no 
means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, 
the first intuitive glance, without any elaborate process of 
reasoning, will show that this method of political computation 
would justify every extent of crime. They would see that on 
these principles, even where the very worst acts were not 
perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspira- 
tors than to their j)arsimony in the expenditure of treachery 
and blood. They would soon see that criminal means once 
tolerated are soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to 
the object than through the highway of the moral virtues. 
Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit 
would soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the 
end ; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful 



176 BURKE. 

than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such 
must be the consequences of losing, in the splendour of these 
triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and 
right. 

To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honour of our 
nation to be somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the 
proceedings of this Society of the Old Jewry and the London 
Tavern. 9 I have no man's proxy. I speak only for myself, 
when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all com- 
munion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers 
of it. When I assert any thing else, as concerning the people 
of England, I speak from observation, not from authority ; but 
I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive 
and mixed communication with the inhabitants of this king- 
dom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after a course of atten- 
tive observation, began early in life, and continued for nearly 
forty years. I have often been astonished, considering that we 
are divided from you but by a slender dyke of about twenty- 
four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the two 
countries has lately been very great, to find how little you seem 
to know of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a 
judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, 
very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and 
dispositions generally prevalent in England. The vanity, 
restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue, of several petty 
cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in 
bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each 
other, make you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of 
their abilities is a mark of general acquiescence in their opin- 
ions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen 
grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their impor- 
tunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposing beneath 
the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, 
pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the 
only inhabitants of the field ; that of course they are many in 
number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, 
shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, 
insects of the hour. 

I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred amongst 
us participates in the "triumph " of the lie volution Society. If 
the King and Queen of Erance, and their children, were to fall 
into our hands by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious 

9 After listening to Dr. Price's sermon, the club adjourned to the London 
Tavern, where they celebrated the millennial dawn with a more natural and ia. 
nocent sort of least. 






THE REVOLUTION IIS" FRANCE. 177 

of all hostilities, (I deprecate such an event, I deprecate such 
hostility,) they would be treated with another sort of tri- 
umphal entry into London. We formerly have had a King of 
France in that situation : 10 you have read how he was treated 
by the victor in the field ; and in what manner he was afterl 
wards received in England. Four hundred years have gone 
over us ; but I believe we are not materially changed since 
that period. Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, 
thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we 
still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I 
conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of thinking of the 
fourteenth century ; nor as yet have we subtilized ourselves 
into savages. We are not the converts of Rousseau ; we are 
not the disciples of Yoltaire ; Helvetius has made no progress 
amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers ; madmen are not 
our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, 
and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality ; 
nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the 
ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were 
born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has 
heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb 
shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity. In England 
we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural 
entrails ; we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, 
those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the 
active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal 
and manly morals. We have not been drawn and trussed, in 
order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, 
with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about 
the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings still 
native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. 
We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. 
We fear God ; we look up with awe to kings ; with affection to 
parliaments ; with duty to magistrates ; with reverence to 
priests ; and with respect to nobility. Why ? Because, when 

10 The allusion is to King John of France, who fell a captive into the hands 
of Edward the Black Frince at the hattle of Poitiers, in September, 1356. The 
next Spring, Edward landed, with his royal captive, at Sandwich, and proceed- 
ed thence, by easy journeys, to London. I quote from Hume: "The prisoner 
was clad in royal apparel, and mounted on a white steed, distinguished by its 
size and beauty, and by the richness of its furniture. The conqueror rode by 
his side in meaner attire, and carried by a black palfrey. In this situation, 
more glorious than all the insolent parade of a Roman triumph, he passed 
through the streets of London, and presented the King of France to his father, 
who advanced to meet him, and received him with the same courtesy as if he 
had been a neighbouring potentate that had voluntarily come to pay him a 
friendly visit." 



178 BURKE. 

such ideas are brought before our miuds, it is natural to be so 
affected ; because all other feelings are false and spurious, and 
tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to 
render us unfit for rational liberty ; and, by teaching us a ser- 
vile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our low sport 
for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and justly 
deserving of, slavery through the whole course of our lives. 

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough 
to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings ; that, 
instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them 
to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to our- 
selves, we cherish them because they are prejudices ; and the 
longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have pre- 
vailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men 
to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason ; be- 
cause we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that 
the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the gen- 
eral bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men 
of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ 
their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in 
them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they 
think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason 
involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave 
nothing but the naked reason ; because prejudice, with its rea- 
son, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection 
which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready applica- 
tion in the emergency ; it previously engages the mind in a 
steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man 
hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and 
unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit ; and 
not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his 
duty becomes a part of his nature. 

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole 
clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these 
points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others ; but 
they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. 
With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of 
things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no 
sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in 
haste ; because duration is no object to those who think little 
or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all 
their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, 
that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and 
therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. 
They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and 
with as little ill effect ; that there needs no principle of attach- 



THE REVOLUTION IN EEANCE. 179 

ment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution 
of the State. They always speak as if they were of opinion that 
there is a singular species of compact between them and their 
magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing 
reciprocal in it ; but that the majesty of the people has a right 
to dissolve it without any reason, but its will. Their attach- 
ment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some 
of their fleeting projects ; it begins and ends with that scheme 
of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion. 

These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with 
your new statesmen. But they are wholly different from those 
on which we have always acted in this country. 

I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what is doing 
among you is after the example of England. I beg leave to 
affirm that scarcely any thing done with you has originated from 
the practice or the prevalent opinions of this people, either in 
the act or in the spirit of the proceeding. Let me add, that we 
are as unwilling to learn these lessons from France, as we are 
sure that we never taught them to that nation. The cabals 
here, who take a sort of share in your transactions, as yet con- 
sist of but a handful of people. If unfortunately by their 
intrigues, their sermons, their publications, and by a confidence 
derived from an expected union with the counsels and forces of 
the French nation, they should draw considerable numbers into 
their faction, and in consequence should seriously attempt any 
thing here in imitation of what has been done with you, the 
event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with some 
trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own 
destruction. This people refused to change their law in remote 
ages from respect to the infallibility of popes ; and they will not 
now alter it from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of 
philosophers ; though the former was armed with the anathema 
and crusade, and though the latter should act with the libel and 
the lamp-iron. 

Formerly your affairs were your own -concern only. We felt 
for them as men ; but we kept aloof from them, because we 
were not citizens of France. But when we see the model held 
up to ourselves, we must feel as Englishmen, and, feeling, we 
must provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us, are 
made a part of our interest ; so far at least as to keep at a dis- 
tance your panacea, or your plague. If it be a panacea, we do 
not want it. We know the consequences of unnecessary physic. 
If it be a plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the 
most severe quarantine ought to b£ established against it. 

I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, re- 
ceives the glory of many of the late proceedings ; and that their 



180 BURKE. 

opinions and systems are the true actuating spirit of the whole 
of them. I have heard of no party in England, literary or polit- 
ical, at any time, known by such a description. It is not with 
you composed of those men, is it, whom the vulgar, in their 
blunt, homely style, commonly call atheists and infidels ? If it 
be, I admit that we too have had writers of that description, 
who made some noise in their day. At present they repose in 
lasting oblivion. Who, born within the last forty years, has 
read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, 
and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Free- 
thinkers ? Who now reads Bolingbroke ? Who ever read him 
through ? Ask the booksellers of London what is become of 
all these lights of the world. In as few years their few successors 
will go to the family vault of "all the Capulets." But what- 
ever they were, or are, with us they were and are wholly 
unconnected individuals. With us they kept the common na- 
ture of their kind, and were not gregarious. They never acted 
in corps, or were known as a faction in the State, nor presumed 
to influence, in that name or character, or for the purposes of 
such a faction, any of our public concerns. Whether they 
ought so to exist, and so be permitted to act, is another ques- 
tion. As such cabals have not existed in England, so neither 
has the spirit of them had any influence in establishing the origi- 
nal frame of our Constitution, or in any one of the several repa- 
rations and improvements it has undergone. The whole has 
been done under the auspices, and is confirmed by the sanctions, 
of religion and piety. The whole has emanated from the sim- 
plicity of our national character, and from a sort of native 
plainness and directness of understanding, which for a long 
time characterized those men who have successively obtained 
authority amongst us. This disposition still remains ; at least 
in the great body of the people. 

We know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion 
is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all 
comfort. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is 
no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity 
of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of 
ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England 
would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as 
to call in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove 
its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construc- 
tion. If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucida- 
tion, we shall not call on atheism to explain them. We shall 
not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be 
illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other 
incense than the infectious stuff which is imported by the 



THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 181 

smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical es- 
tablishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, 
public or private, that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, 
or application of its consecrated revenue. Violently condem- 
ning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are 
subsided, the Eoman system of religion, we prefer the Protes- 
tant ; not because we think it has less of the Christian religion 
in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are Prot- 
estants, not from indifference, but from zeal. 

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his con- 
stitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only 
our reason, but our instincts ; and that it cannot prevail long. 
But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from 
the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of Hell, which in France 
is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, 
by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been 
our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization 
amongst us, and amongst many other nations, we are apprehen- 
sive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) 
that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition 
might take the place of it. 

Por that reason, before we take from our establishment the 
natural, human means of estimation, and give it up to con- 
tempt, as you have done, and in doing it have incurred the pen- 
alties you well deserve to suffer, we desire that some other may 
be presented to us in the place of it. We shall then form our 
judgment. 

On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, 
as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of their 
hostility to such institutions, we cleave closely to them. Our 
Church establishment is the first of our prejudices, not a preju- 
dice destitute of reason, but involving in it profound and exten- 
sive wisdom. It is first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, 
taking ground on that religious system of which we are now in 
possession, we continue to act on the early-received and 
uniformly-continued sense of mankind. That sense not only, 
like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabric of States, 
but like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structure from 
profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple purged from all the 
impurities of fraud and violence and injustice and tyranny, 
hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and 
all that officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who 
administer in the government of men, in which they stand in 
the person of God himself, should have high and worthy no- 
tions of their function and destination ; that their hope should 
be full of immortality ; that they should not look to the paltry 



182 15FEKE. 

pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise 
of the vulgar, but to a solid, permanent existence, in the perma- 
nent part of their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, 
in the example they leave as a rich inheritance to the world. 

Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of 
exalted situations ; and religious establishments provided, that 
may continually revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, 
every sort of civil, every sort of politic institution, aiding the 
rational and natural ties that connect the human understanding 
and affections to the Divine, are not more than is necessary, in 
order to build up that wonderful structure, Man; whose prerog- 
ative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of his own mak- 
ing ; and who, when made as he ought to be made, is destined 
to hold no trivial place in the creation. But whenever man is 
put over men, as the better nature ought ever to preside, in that 
case more particularly he should, as nearly as possible be ap- 
proximated to his perfection. 

The consecration of the State, by a state religious establish- 
ment, is necessary also to operate with a wholesome awe upon 
free citizens ; because, in order to secure their freedom, they 
must enjoy some determinate portion of power. To them 
therefore a religion connected with the State, and with their 
duty towards it, becomes even more necessary than in such so- 
cieties where the people, by the terms of their subjection, are 
confined to private sentiments, and the management of their 
own family concerns. All persons possessing any portion of 
power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed With an idea 
that they act in trust ; and that they are to account for their 
conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and 
Founder of society. 

This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed 
upon the minds of those who compose the collective sover- 
eignty than upon those of single princes. Without instruments, 
these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses instruments, in 
finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is therefore 
by no means complete ; nor are they safe in extreme abuse. 
Such persons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and self- 
opinion, must be sensible that, whether covered or not by posi- 
tive law, in some way or other they are accountable even here 
for the abuse of their trust. If they are not cut off by a rebel- 
lion of their people, they may be strangled by the very janissa- 
ries kept for their security against all other rebellion. Thus 
we have seen the King of France sold by his soldiers for an in- 
crease of pay. But where popular authority is absolute and 
unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a 
far better-founded, confidence in their own power. They are 



THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 183 

themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They 
are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under re- 
sponsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on Earth, 
the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is 
likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small 
indeed ; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to 
the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation 
of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judg- 
ment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore the 
most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shame- 
less, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his 
person that he can be made subject to punishment. Certainly 
the people at large never ought ; for, as all punishments are for 
example towards the conservation of the people at large, the 
people at large can never become the subject of punishment by 
any human hand. It is therefore of infinite importance that 
they should not be suffered to imagine that their will, any more 
than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong. They 
ought to be persuaded that they are full as little entitled, and 
far less qualified, with safety to themselves, to use any arbitrary 
power whatsoever ; that therefore they are not, under a false 
show of liberty, but, in truth, by exercising an unnatural, in- 
verted domination, tyrannically to exact from those who offici- 
ate in the State, not an entire devotion to their interest, which 
is their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will ; 
extinguishing thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral 
principle, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, and all con- 
sistency of character ; whilst by the very same process they 
give themselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most contempti- 
ble prey to the servile ambition of popular sycophants or 
courtly flatterers. 

When the people have emptied themselves of all the lust of 
selfish will, which without religion it is utterly impossible they 
ever should ; when they are conscious that they exercise, and 
exercise perhaps in a higher link of the order of delegation, the 
power, which to be legitimate must be according to that eternal, 
immutable law, in which will and reason are the same, — they 
will be more careful how they place power in base and incapa- 
ble hands. In their nomination to office, they will not appoint 
to the exercise of authority, as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy 
function ; not according to their sordid, selfish interest, nor to 
their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary will ; but they will 
confer that power (which any man may Avell tremble to give 
or to receive) on those only in whom they may discern that 
predominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom, taken 
together and fitted to the charge, such as, in the great and in- 



184 BTJRKE. 

evitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities, is 
to be found. 

When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be ac- 
ceptable, either in the act or the permission, to Him whose es- 
sence is good, they will be better able to extirpate out of the 
minds of all magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, any 
thing that bears the least resemblance to a proud and lawless 
domination. 

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the 
commonwealth and the laws are consecrated is, lest the tempo- 
rary possessors and. life-renters in it, unmindful of what they 
have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their 
posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they 
should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or 
commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleas- 
ure the whole original fabric of their society ; hazarding to 
leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habita- 
tion ; and teaching these successors as little to respect their 
contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions 
of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing 
the State as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there 
are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity 
of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation 
could link with another. Men would become little better than 
the flies of a Summer. 

And, first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of 
the human intellect, — which, with all its defects, redundancies, 
and errors, is the collected reason of ages, combining the 
principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human 
concerns, — as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer 
studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certain 
attendants upon all those who have never experienced a wis- 
dom greater than their own) would usurp the tribunal. Of 
course no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope 
and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or 
direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of 
holding property, or exercising function, could form a solid 
ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of 
his offspring, or in a choice for their future establishment in 
the world. No principles would be early worked into the 
habits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed his 
laborious course of institution, instead of sending forth his 
pupil accomplished in a virtuous discipline, fitted to procure 
him attention and respect in his place in society, he would find 
every thing altered ; and that he had turned out a poor crea- 
ture to the contempt and derision of the world, ignorant of the 






THE REVOLUTION IN" FRANCE. 185 

true grounds of estimation. Who would insure a tender and 
delicate sense of honour to beat almost with the first pulses of 
the heart, when no man could know what would be the test of 
honour in a nation, continually varying the standard of its 
coin ? No part of life would retain its acquisitions. Barbarism 
with regard to science and literature, unskilfulness with regard 
to arts and manufactures, would infallibly succeed to the want 
of a ste#ly education and settled principle ; and thus the 
commonwealth itself would, in a few generations, crumble 
away, be disconnected into the dust and powder of individu- 
ality, and at length dispersed to all the winds of heaven. 

To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, 
ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blind- 
est prejudice, we have consecrated the State, that no man should 
approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due 
caution ; that he should never dream of beginning its reforma- 
tion by its subversion ; that he should approach to the faults of 
the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and 
trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to 
look with horror on the children of their country, who are 
prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him 
into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous 
weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal 
constitution, and renovate their father's life. 

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for 
objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleas- 
ure ; but the State ought not to be considered as nothing better 
than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, 
calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken 
up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the 
fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other rever- 
ence ; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only 
to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable 
nature. It is a partnership in all science ; a partnership in all 
art ; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As 
the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many 
generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those 
who are living, but between those who are living, those who 
are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each 
particular State is but a clause in the great primeval contract of 
eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, 
connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed 
compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all 
physical and all moral natures each in their appointed place. 
This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obliga- 
tion above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit 



186 BURKE. 

their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that 
universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, 
and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly 
to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate 
community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, uncon- 
nected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and 
supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but 
chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that #dmits no 
discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a 
resort to anarchy. This necessity itself is no exception to 
the rule ; because this necessity itself is a part too of that 
moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be 
obedient by consent or force : but if that which is only submis- 
sion to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law 
is broken, Nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, 
cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason and order, and 
peace and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist 
world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing 
sorrow. 

These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, the 
sentiments of not the least learned and reflecting part of this 
kingdom. They who are included in this description form their 
opinions on such grounds as such persons ought to form them. 
The less inquiring receive them from an authority, which those 
whom Providence dooms to live on trust need not be ashamed 
to rely on. These two sorts of men move in the same direction, 
though in a different place. They both move with the order of 
the universe. They all know or feel this great ancient truth: 
" Quod illi principi et prsepotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum 
regit, nihil eorum quae quidem fiant in terris acceptius quam 
concilia et coetus hominum jure sociati quae civitates appellan- 
tur." 11 They take this tenet of the head and heart, not from 
the great name which it immediately bears, nor from the greater 
from whence it is derived ; but from that which alone can give 
true weight and sanction to any learned opinion, the common 
nature and common relation of men. They think themselves 
bound, not only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart, or 
as congregated in that personal capacity, to renew the memory 
of their high origin and cast ; but also in their corporate charac- 
ter to perform their national homage to the Institutor, and 
Author, and Protector of civil society ; without which civil so- 
ciety man could not by any possibility arrive at the perfection 

11 "To the sovereign and all-powerful Deity who governs the Universe, 
nothing that happens on the Earth is more acceptable than those unions and 
combinations of men held together by law and justice which aret5alled States." 
The passage is quoted from Cicero, who, I think, derived it from Plato. 



THE REVOLUTION IN" FRANCE. 187 

of which his nature is capable, nor even make a remote and 
faint approach to it. They conceive that He who gave our na- 
ture to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary 
means of its perfection. He willed therefore the State ; He 
willed its connection with the Source and original Archetype of 
all perfection. They who are convinced of this His will, which 
is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think 
it reprehensible that this our corporate fealty and homage, that 
this our recognition of a signiory paramount, I had almost said 
this oblation of the State itself, as a worthy offering on the high 
altar of universal praise, should be performed, as all public sol- 
emn acts are performed, in buildings, in music, in decoration, in 
speech, in the dignity of persons, according to the customs of 
mankind, taught by their nature ; that is, with modest splen- 
dour and unassuming state, with mild majesty and sober pomp. 
For those purposes they think some part of the wealth of the 
country is as usefully employed as it can be in fomenting the 
luxury of individuals. It is the public ornament. It is the 
public consolation. It nourishes the public hope. The poorest 
man finds his own importance and dignity in it, whilst the 
wealth and pride of individuals at every moment makes the 
man of humble rank and fortune sensible of his inferiority, and 
degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the man in humble 
life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state 
in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be 
equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue, that 
this portion of the general wealth of his country is employed 
and sanctified. 

So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fash- 
ions of institution, that very little alteration has been made in 
them since the fourteenth or fifteenth century; adhering in 
this particular, as in all things else, to our old settled maxim, 
never entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity. We found 
these old institutions, on the whole, favourable to morality and 
discipline ; and we thought they were susceptible of amend- 
ment, without altering the ground. We thought that they 
were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all of 
preserving, the accessions of science and literature, as the order 
of Providence should successively produce them. And, after 
all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is in the 
groundwork) we may put in our claim to as ample and as early 
a share in all the improvements in science, in arts, and in litera- 
ture, which have illuminated and adorned the modern world, 
as any other nation in Europe : we think one main cause of this 
improvement was our not despising the patrimony of knowledge 
which was left us by our forefathers. 




188 BUEKE. 

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading 
in England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct, 
would be ashamed, as of a silly, deceitful trick, to profess any 
religion in name, which, by their proceedings, they appear to 
contemn. If by their conduct (the only language that rarely 
lies) they seemed to regard the great ruling principle of the 
moral and the natural world as a mere invention to keep the 
vulgar in obedience, they apprehend that by such a conduct 
they would defeat the politic purpose they have in view. They 
would find it difficult to make others believe in a system to 
which they manifestly give no credit themselves. The Christian 
statesmen of this land would indeed first provide for the multi- 
tude; because it is the multitude; and is therefore, as such, the 
first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in all institu- 
tions. They have been taught that the circumstance of the 
Gospel's being preached to the poor was one of the great tests 
of its true mission. They think, therefore, that those do not 
believe it who do not take care it should be preached to the 
poor. But, as they know that charity is not confined to any one 
description, but ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, 
they are not deprived of a due and anxious sensation of pity to 
the distresses of the miserable great. They are not repelled 
through a fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance 
and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental 
blotches and running sores. They are sensible that religious 
instruction is of more consequence to them than to any others ; 
from the greatness of the temptations to which they are ex- 
posed ; from the important consequences that attend their 
faults ; from the contagion of their ill example ; from the 
necessity of bowing down the stubborn neck of their pride and 
ambition to the yoke of moderation and virtue ; from a consid- 
eration of the fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning 
what imports men most to know, which prevail at Courts, and 
at the head of armies, and in senates, as much as at the loom 
and in the field. # 

The English people are satisfied that to the great the conso- 
lations of religion are as necessary as its instructions. They too 
are among the unhappy. They feel personal pain and domestic 
sorrow. In these they have no privilege, but are subject to pay 
their full contingent to the contributions levied on mortality. 
They want this sovereign balm under their gnawing cares and 
anxieties, which, being less conversant about the limited wants 
of animal life, range without limit, and are diversified by infi- 
nite combinations, in the wild and unbounded regions of imagi- 
nation. Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often 
very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in 



THE REVOLTJTION IN" FRANCE. 189 J 

minds which have nothing on Earth to hope or fear ; something 
to relieve in the killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of 
those who have nothing to do ; something to excite an appetite 
to existence in the palled satiety which attends on all pleasures 
which may be bought, where nature is not left to her own pro- 
cess, where even desire is anticipated, and therefore fruition 
defeated, by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight ; 
and no interval, no obstacle, is interposed between the wish 
and the accomplishment. 

The people of England know how little influence the teachers 
of religion are likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of 
long standing, and how much less with the newly fortunate, if 
they appear in a manner no way assorted to those with whom 
they must associate, and over whom they must even exercise, 
in some cases, something like an authority. What must they 
think of that body of teachers, if they see it in no part above 
the establishment of their domestic servants ? If the poverty 
were voluntary, there might be some difference. Strong in- 
stances of self-denial operate powerfully on our minds ; and a 
man who has no wants has obtained great freedom, and firm- 
ness, and even dignity. But as the mass of any description of 
men are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that 
disrespect which attends upon all lay poverty will not depart 
from the ecclesiastical. Our provident Constitution has there- 
fore taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous 
ignorance, those who are to be censors over insolent vice, should 
neither incur their contempt, nor live upon their alms ; nor will 
it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their 
minds. For these reasons, whilst we provide first for the poor, 
and with a parental solicitude, we have not relegated religion 
(like something we were ashamed to show) to obscure munici- 
palities or rustic villages. 3STo! we will have her to exalt her 
mitred front in Courts and Parliaments. We will have her 
mixed throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all 
the classes of society. The people of England will show, to the 
haughty potentates of the world, and to their talking sophisters, 
that a free, a generous, an infonned nation honours the high 
magistrates of its Church ; that it will not suffer the insolence 
of wealth and titles, or any other species of proud pretension, 
to look down with scorn upon what they look up to with rever- 
ence ; nor presume to trample on that acquired personal nobil- 
ity which they intend always to be, and which often is, the 
fruit, not the reward, (for what can be the reward ?) of learning, 
piety, and virtue. 

In England most of us conceive that it is envy and malignity 
towards those who are often the beginners of their own fortune, 



] 90 BURKE. 



and not a love of the self-denial and mortification of the ancient 
Church, that makes some look askance at the distinctions and 
honours and revenues which, taken from no persou, are set 
apart for virtue. The ears of the people of England are dis- 
tinguishing. They hear these men speak broad. Their tongue 
betrays them. Their language is in the patois of fraud ; in the 
cant and the gibberish of hypocrisy. The people of England 
must think so, when these praters affect to carry back the 
Clergy to that primitive, evangelic poverty which, in the spirit, 
ought always to exist in them, (and in us too, however we may 
like it,) but in the thing must be varied, when the relation of 
that body to the State is altered ; when manners, when modes 
of life, when indeed the whole order of human affairs has un- 
dergone a total revolution. We shall believe those reformers 
then to be honest enthusiasts, not, as now we think them, cheats 
and deceivers, when we see them throwing their goods into 
common, and submitting their own persons to the austere dis- 
cipline of the early Church. 1 



nt 



LIBERTY 18 THE ABSTRACT. 

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated lib- 
erty as well as any gentleman of that Society, be he who he 
will ; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment 
to that cause, in the whole course of my public conduct. I 
think I envy liberty as little as they do to any other nation. 
But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any 
thing which relates to human actions and human concerns, on a 
simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, 
in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. 
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) 
give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing 
colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what 
render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to 

1 The great paper from which the foregoing 1 piece is taken, besides not be- 
ing, as a whole, very well suited to the purposes of this volume, is much too 
long for reproduction here. I have here given that portion of it which. I have 
long been in the habit of reading the oftenest, and which is regarded by many 
as the most eloquent and interesting; though there are several others abun- 
dantly worthy of its fellowship. But, if pupils once get ensouled with a real 
taste for Burke, they will naturally be carried on to study, not only the whole 
of this paper, but also many other of his works not contained in this volume. 



LIBERTY IK THE ABSTRACT. 191 

mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as lib- 
erty, is good ; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have 
felicitated Trance on her enjoyment of a government, (for she 
then had a government,) without inquiry what the nature of 
that government was, or how it was administered ? Can I now 
congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because 
liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of 
mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman who has 
escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness 
of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and lib- 
erty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who 
has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? 
This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals con- 
demned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the meta- 
physic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. 

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong prin- 
ciple at work ; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know 
of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but 
we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence 
is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see 
something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy 
surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to 
congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really re- 
ceived one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver ; 
and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. 
I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new lib- 
erty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined 
with government ; with public force ; with the discipline and 
obedience of armies ; with the collection of an effective and 
well-distributed revenue ; with morality and religion ; with the 
security of property; with peace and order ; with civil and social 
manners. All these (in their way) are good things too ; and, 
without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not 
likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, 
that they may do what they please : we ought to see what it 
will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which 
may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate 
this in the case of separate, insulated, private men. But liberty, 
when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before 
they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of 
power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new 
persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions they 
have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who 
appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the 
real movers.— Reflections, &c. 



192 BUKKE. 



EREEDOM AS AN INHERITANCE. 



You will observe that, from Magna Charta to the Declaration 
of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our Constitution to 
claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived 
to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our pos- 
terity ; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this 
kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more, 
general or prior right. By this means our Constitution pre- 
serves a unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an 
inheritable Crown ; an inheritable Peerage ; and a House of 
Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and 
-liberties, from a long line of ancestors. 

This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflec- 
tion ; or rather the happy effect of following Nature, which is 
wisdom without reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation 
is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views. 
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look back- 
ward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well 
know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of 
conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all 
excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition 
free ; but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages 
are obtained by a State proceeding on these maxims, are locked 
fast as in a sort of family settlement ; grasped as in a kind of 
mortmain for ever. By a constitutional policy, working after 
the pattern of Nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our 
government and our privileges, in the same manner in which 
we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institu- 
tions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are 
handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. 
Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and 
symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of 
existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory 
parts ; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, 
moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the 
human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle- 
aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, 
moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, 
renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method 
of Nature in the conduct of the State, in what we improve we 
are never wholly new ; in what we retain we are never wholly 
obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on these principles 
to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of 
antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this 



i 



FREEDOM AS AN INHERITANCE. 193 

choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the 
image of a relation in blood; binding up the Constitution of our 
country with our dearest domestic ties ; adopting our funda- 
mental laws into the bosom of our family affections ; keeping 
inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their com- 
bined and mutually reflected charities, our State, oar hearths, 
our sepulchres, and our altars. 

Through the same plan of a conformity to Nature in our arti- 
ficial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and 
powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances 
of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no 
small, benefits, from considering our liberties in the light of an 
inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized 
forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule 
and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a 
liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dig- 
nity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably 
adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of 
any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble 
freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a 
pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its 
ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits ; its monu- 
mental inscriptions ; its records, evidences, and titles. We pro- 
cure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon 
which Nature teaches us to revere individual men, — on account 
of their age, and on account of those from whom they are de- 
scended. All your sophisters cannot produce any thing better 
adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the 
course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature 
rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our in- 
ventions, for the great conservatories and magazines of our 
rights and privileges. 

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and 
have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. 
Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. 
Your Constitution, it is true, whilst you were out of possession, 
suffered waste and dilapidation ; but you possessed in some 
parts the walls, and, in all, the foundations, of a noble and 
venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls ; you 
might have built on those old foundations. Your Constitution 
was suspended before it was perfected ; but you had the ele- 
ments of a constitution very nearly as good as could be wished. 
In your old states 2 you possessed that variety of parts corre- 

2 States, as the word is here user], are orders, or ranks, the several bodies or 
classes of men sharing in the powers of government Or of the State. Thus, in 



194 BURKE. 

sponding with the various descriptions of which your community 
was happily composed ; you had all that combination and all 
that opposition of interests, you had that action and counterac- 
tion, which, in the natural and in the political world, from the 
reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the har- 
mony of the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests, 
which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in 
our present Constitution, interpose a salutary check to all 
precipitate resolutions. They render deliberation a matter not 
of choice, but of necessity ; they make all change a subject of 
compromise, which naturally begets moderation ; they produce 
temperaments, preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, unquali- 
fied reformations ; and rendering all the headlong exertions of 
arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for ever impractica- 
ble. Through that diversity of members and interests, general 
liberty had as many securities as there were separate views in 
the several orders ; whilst, by pressing down the whole by the 
weight of a real monarchy, the separate parts would have 
been prevented from warping, and starting from their allotted 
places. 

You had all these advantages in your ancient states ; but you 
chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, 
and had every thing to begin anew. You began ill, because 
you began by despising every thing that belonged to you. You 
set up your trade without a capital. If the last generations 
of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes, 
you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from 
a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for 
those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them 
a standard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar practice of 
the hour ; and you would have risen with the example to whose 
imitation you aspired. Eespecting your forefathers, you would 
have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have 
chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a 
nation of low-born, servile wretches until the emancipating year 
of 17S9. In order to furnish, at the expense of your honour, an 
excuse to your apologists here for several enormities of yours, 
you would not have been content to be represented as a gang 
of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of 
bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the 
liberty to which you were not accustomed, and ill fitted. 
Would it not, my worthy friend, have been wiser to have you 

England, King, Lords, Commons, and Clergy are states or estates of the realm; 
though the latter, the Clergy, have no direct or formal organ, as such, except 
the Bench of Bishops in the House of Peers. 



FREEDOM AS AN" INHERITANCE. 195 

thought, what I, for one, always thought you, a generous and 
gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by your high 
and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honour, and loyalty ; that 
events had been unfavourable to you, but that you were not 
enslaved through any illiberal or servile disposition ; that in 
your most devoted submission you were actuated by a principle 
of public spirit, and that it was your country you worshipped 
in the person of your King? Had you made it to be under- 
stood, that in the delusion of this amiable error you had gone 
further than your wise ancestors ; that you were resolved to 
resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit 
of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honour; or if, 
diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost 
obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to 
your neighbours in this land, who had kept alive the ancient 
principles and models of the old common law of Europe 
meliorated and adapted to its present state, — by following wise 
examples you would have given new examples of wisdom to the 
world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty venera- 
ble in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You 
would have shamed despotism from the Earth, by showing 
that freedom was not only reconcilable, but, as when well 
disciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had an 
unoppressive but a productive revenue. You would have had 
a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a 
free constitution ; a potent monarchy ; a disciplined army ; a 
reformed and venerated clergy; a mitigated but spirited no- 
bility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it ; you would have 
had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and to recruit that 
nobility ; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, 
and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the hap- 
piness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions ; in which 
consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that 
monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain 
expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of 
laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real 
inequality which it never can remove ; and which the order of 
civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it 
must leave in an humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt 
to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a 
smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open to you, 
beyond any thing recorded in the history of the world ; but 
you have shown that difficulty is good for man. 

Compute your gains: see what is got by those extravagant 
and presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders 
to despise all their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, 



196 BURKE. 

and even to despise themselves, until the moment in which 
they became truly despicable. By following those false lights, 
France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price 
than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings ! 
France has bought poverty by crime ! France has not sacri- 
ficed her virtue to her interest, but she has abandoned her 
interest, that she might prostitute her virtue. All other na- 
tions have begun the fabric of a new government, or the re- 
formation of an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing 
with greater exactness, some rites or other of religion. All 
other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in se- 
verer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine 
morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal author- 
ity, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, 
and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices ; and has 
extended through all ranks of life, as if she were communicat- 
ing some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all 
the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of 
wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equal- 
ity in France. 

France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced 
the tone of lenient counsel in the cabinets of princes, and dis- 
armed it of its most potent topics. She has sanctified the dark, 
suspicious maxims of tyrannous distrust ; and taught kings to 
tremble at (what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausi- 
bilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those 
who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their peo- 
ple, as subverters of their thrones ; as traitors who aim at their 
destruction, by leading their easy good-nature, under specious 
pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faithless men into 
a participation of their power. This alone (if there were noth- 
ing else) is an irreparable calamity to you and mankind. Re- 
member that your Parliament of Paris told your King that, in 
calling the states together, he had nothing to fear but the prod- 
igal excess of their zeal in providing for the support of the 
throne. It is right that these men should hide their heads. It 
is right that they should bear their part in the ruin which their 
counsel has brought on their sovereign and their country. 
Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep ; to 
encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried 
policy ; to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precau- 
tions, which distinguish benevolence from imbecility ; and 
without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any 
abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, 
they have seen the medicine of the State corrupted into its poi- 
son. They have seen the French rebel against a mild. and law- 



FREEDOM AS AN INHERITANCE. * 197 

ful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than ever 
any people has been known to rise against the most illegal 
usurper, or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was 
made to concession ; their revolt was from protection ; their 
blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favours, and 
immunities. 

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found 
their punishment in their success. Laws overturned ; tribu- 
nals subverted ; industry without vigour ; commerce expiring ; 
the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished ; a Church 
pillaged, and a State not relieved ; civil and military anarchy 
made the constitution of the kingdom ; every thing human and 
divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bank- 
ruptcy the consequence ; and, to crown all, the paper securities 
of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper secu- 
rities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a 
currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great 
recognized species that represent the lasting, conventional 
credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in 
the earth from whence they came, when the principle of prop- 
erty, whose creatures and representatives they are, was sys- 
tematically subverted. 

Were all these dreadful things necessary? "Were they the 
inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined patri- 
ots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult, to the quiet 
shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty ? No ! nothing like 
it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wher- 
ever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war ; 
they are the sad but instructive monuments of rash and igno- 
rant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display 
of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and 
irresistible, authority. The persons who have thus squandered 
away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who 
have made this prodigal and wild waste of public evils, (the 
last stake reserved for the ultimate ransom of the State,) have 
met in their progress with little, or rather with no opposition at 
all. Their whole march was more like a triumphal procession 
than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have gone before 
them, and demolished and laid every thing level at their feet. 
Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the 
country they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to 
their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles, 
whilst they were imprisoning their King, murdering their fellow- 
citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and dis- 
tress, thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their 



198 BURKE. 

cruelty has not even been the base result of fear. It has been 
the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing trea- 
sons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters,* and burnings, 
throughout their harassed land.— Reflections, &c. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY THIRD ESTATE. 

In the calling of the States-General of France, the first thing 
that struck me was a great departure from the ancient course. 
I found the representation for the Third Estate composed of 
six hundred persons. They were equal in number to the rep- 
resentatives of both the other orders. If the orders were to 
act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration 
of the expense, be of much moment. But when it became 
apparent that the three orders were to be melted down into 
one, the policy and necessary effect of this numerous represen- 
tation became obvious. A very small desertion from either of 
the other two orders must throw the power of both into the 
hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of the State was 
soon resolved into that body. Its due composition became 
therefore of infinitely the greater importance. 

Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great 
proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I believe, of the mem- 
bers who attended) was composed of practitioners in the law. 
It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, who had 
given pledges to their country of their science, prudence, and 
integrity ; not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar ; not 
of renowned professors in universities ; but, for the far greater 
part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, 
mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. 
There were distinguished exceptions ; but the general compo- 
sition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty 
local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries, and the whole 
train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and 
conductors of the petty war of village vexation. Erom the 
moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it 
has happened, all that was to follow. 

The degree of estimation in which any profession is held 
becomes the standard of the estimation in which the professors 
hold themselves. Whatever the personal merits of many 
individual lawyers might have been, (and in many it was 
undoubtedly very considerable,) in that military kingdom no 
part of the profession had been much regarded, except the 



THE REVOLUTIONARY THIRD ESTATE. 199 

highest of all, who often united to their professional offices 
great family splendour, and were invested with great power 
and authority. These certainly were highly respected, and 
even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not 
much esteemed ; the mechanical part was in a very low degree 
of repute. 

Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so 
composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of 
supreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught 
habitually to respect themselves ; who had no previous fortune 
in character at stake ; who could not be expected to bear with 
moderation, or to conduct with discretion, a power which they 
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised to find in 
their hands. Who could flatter himself that these men, sud- 
denly, and, as it were, by enchantment, snatched from the 
humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated 
with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that 
men, who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of 
litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back 
into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, 
low, and unprofitable chicane ? Who could doubt but that, at 
any expense to the State, of which they understood nothing, 
they must pursue their private interests, which they under- 
stood but too well ? It was not an event depending on chance 
or contingency. It was inevitable ; it was necessary ; it was 
planted in the nature of things. They must join (if their 
capacity did not permit them to lead) in any project which 
could procure to them a litigious constitution; which could lay 
open to them those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in 
the train of all great convulsions and revolutions in the State, 
and particularly in all great and violent permutations of prop- 
erty. Was it to be expected that they would attend to the 
stability of property, whose existence had always depended 
upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and 
insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their eleva- 
tion, but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplish- 
ing their designs, must remain the same. 

We know that the British House of Commons, without shut- 
ting its doors to any merit in any class, is, by the sure opera- 
tion of adequate causes, filled with every thing illustrious in 
rank, in descent, in hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cul- 
tivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic distinction, 
that the country can afford. But supposing, what hardly can 
be supposed as a case, that the House of Commons should be 
composed in the same manner with the Tiers Etat in France, 
would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even 



200 BURKE. 

conceived without horror? God forbid I should insinuate any 
thing derogatory to that profession which is another priesthood, 
administrating the rights of sacred justice. But whilst I revere 
men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as 
much as one man can do to prevent their exclusion from any, I 
cannot, to flatter them, give the lie to Nature. They are good 
and useful in the composition ; they must be mischievous if 
they preponderate so as virtually to become the whole. Their 
very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from a 
qualification for others. It cannot escape observation that, 
when men are too much confined to professional and faculty 
habits, and as it were inveterate in the recurrent employment 
of that narrow circle, they are rather disabled than qualified for 
whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on experience 
in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view of the va- 
rious, complicated, external and internal interests which go to 
the formation of that multifarious thing called a State. 

After all, if the House of Commons were to have a wholly 
professional and faculty composition, what is the power of the 
House of Commons, circumscribed and shut in by the immove- 
able barriers of laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and prac- 
tice, counterpoised by the House of Lords, and every moment 
of its existence at the discretion of the Crown to continue, pro- 
rogue, or dissolve us ? The power of the House of Commons, 
direct or indirect, is indeed great ; and long may it be able to 
preserve its greatness, and the spirit belonging to true great- 
ness, at the full ! — and it will do so, as long as it can keep the 
breakers of law in India from becoming the makers of law for 
England. The power, however, of the House of Commons, 
when least diminished, is as a drop of water in the ocean, com- 
pared to that residing in a settled majority of your National 
Assembly. That Assembly, since the destruction of the orders, 
has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected 
usage, to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to 
conform to a fixed constitution, they have a power to make a 
constitution which shall conform to their designs. Nothing in 
Heaven or upon Earth can serve as a control on them. "What 
ought to be the heads, the hearts, the dispositions, that are 
qualified, or that dare, not only to make laws under a fixed con- 
stitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new constitution 
for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from the monarch 
on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But — " fools rush in 
where angels fear to tread." In such a state of unbounded 
power for undefined and undefinable purposes, the evil of a 
moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man to the func- 



THE REVOLUTIONARY THIRD ESTATE. 201 

tion must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the 
management of human affairs. 

Having considered the composition of the Third Estate as it 
stood in its original frame, I took a view of the representatives 
of the clergy. There too it appeared that full as little regard 
was had to the general security of property, or to the aptitude 
of the deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of 
their election. That election was so contrived, as to send a 
very large proportion of mere country curates to the great and 
arduous work of new-modelling a State ; men who never had 
seen the State so much as in a picture ; men who knew nothing 
of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village ; who, 
immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, 
whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of 
envy ; among whom must be many who, for the smallest hope 
of the meanest dividend in plunder, would readily join in any 
attempts upon a body of wealth, in which they could hardly 
look to have any share, except in a general scramble. Instead 
of balancing the power of the active chicaners in the other As- 
sembly, these curates must necessarily become the active coad- 
jutors, or at best the passive instruments, of those by whom 
they had been habitually guided in their petty village concerns. 
They too could hardly be the most conscientious of their kind, 
who, presuming upon their incompetent understanding, could 
intrigue for a trust which led them from their natural relation 
to their flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to undertake 
the regeneration of kingdoms. This preponderating weight, 
being added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers Etat, 
completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, 
and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist. 

To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, 
that the majority of the Third Estate, in conjunction with such 
a deputation from the clergy as I have described, whilst it pur- 
sued the destruction of the nobility, would inevitably become 
subservient to the worst designs of individuals in that class. 
In the spoil and humiliation of their own order these individu- 
als would possess a sure fund for the pay of their new follow- 
ers. To squander away the objects which made the happiness 
of their fellows would be to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, 
discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed 
up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their 
own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish 
and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity 
which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdi- 
vision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the 
first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is 



202 BUKKE. 

the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love 
to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion 
of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who 
compose it ; and, as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, 
none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal 
advantage. 

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition 
without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and 
for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. 
Does not something like this now appear in France ? Does it 
not produce something ignoble and inglorious ? a kind of mean- 
ness in all the prevalent policy ? a tendency in all that is done to 
lower, along with individuals, all the dignity and importance of 
the State ? Other revolutions have been conducted by persons 
who, whilst they attempted or affected changes in the common- 
wealth, sanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of 
the people whose peace they troubled. They had long views. 
They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction, of their country. 
They were men of great civil and great military talents, and, if 
the terror, the ornament of their age. The compliment made 
to one of the great bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his 
kinsman, a favourite poet of that time, shows what it was he 
proposed, and what indeed to a great degree he accomplished, 
in the success of his ambition : 

" Still as you rise, the State, exalted too, 
Finds no distemper whilst 'tis changed by you; 
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise 
The rising Sun night's vulgar lights destroys." 3 

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power 
as asserting their natural place in society. Their rising was to 
illuminate and beautify the world. Their conquest over their 
competitors was by outshining them. The hand that, like a 
destroying angel, smote the country communicated to it the 
force and energy under which it suffered. I do not say, (God 
forbid ! ) I do not say that the virtues of such men were to be 
taken as a balance to their crimes ; but they were some correct- 
ive to their effects. Such was, as I said, our Cromwell. Such 

3 This quotation is from a poem by Edmund Waller, entitled " A Panegyric 
on my Lord Protector, of the Present Greatness and Joint Interest of his High- 
ness and this Nation." It is the best of Waller's poems, and that is saying a 
good deal for it. Waller's mother Avas a sister of the celebrated John Hamp- 
den, and through her he was related to Cromwell ; I do not know in what de- 
gree. He was elected to Parliament twice before reaching the age of twenty- 
one, and was also in all the parliaments held daring the reign of Charles the 
Second. I must add that Waller owned and occupied the same estate at Bea- 
consficld where Burke lived from 1768 till his death. 






THE KEVOLUTIO^AKY THIKD ESTATE. 203 

were your whole race of Guises, Condes, and Colignis. Such the 
Kichelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of a civil 
war. Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause, were 
your Henry the Fourth and your Sully, though nursed in civil 
confusions, and not wholly without some of their taint. It is a 
thing to be wondered at, to see how very soon France, when 
she had a moment to respire, recovered and emerged from the 
longest and most dreadful civil war that ever was known in any 
nation. Why? Because, among all their massacres, they had 
not slain the mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a no- 
ble pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation was not 
extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. 
The organs also of the State, however shattered, existed. All 
the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, all the distinc- 
tions remained. But your present confusion, like a palsy, has 
attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your coun- 
try, in a situation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is 
disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life, 
except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this 
generation will quickly pass away. The next generation of the 
nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money- 
jobbers, usurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, 
sometimes their masters. Believe me, Sir, those who attempt 
to level, never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various 
descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. 
The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural 
order of things ; they load the edifice of society, by setting up 
in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on 
the ground. 

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, 
captious spirit, or of that uncanclid dulness, as to require, for 
every general observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the 
correctives and exceptions which reason will presume to be 
included in all the general propositions which come from rea- 
sonable men. You do not imagine that I wish to confine power, 
authority, and distinction to blood and names and titles. No, 
Sir! There is no qualification for government but virtue and 
wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually 
found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or 
trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honour. 
Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject 
the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, 
that are given to grace and to serve it ; and would condemn to 
obscurity every thing formed to diffuse lustre and glory around 
a State! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the oppo- 
site extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view 



204 - BURKE. 

of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title 
to command! Every thing ought to be open ; but not indiffer- 
ently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no 
mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation 
can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive 
objects ; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to 
select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the 
one to the other. I do not hesitate to say, that the road to emi- 
nence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made 
too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the 
rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of 
probation. The temple of honour ought to be seated on an em- 
inence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered 
too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some 
struggle. — Beflections, <5cc. 



THE RIGHTS OF MEN. 

It is no wonder that, with these ideas of every thing in their 
Constitution and government at home as illegitimate and 
usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, men look abroad with 
an eager and passionate enthusiasm. "Whilst they are pos- 
sessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice 
of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the 
iixed form of a Constitution, whose merits are confirmed by 
the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public 
strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as 
the wisdom of unlettered men ; and, as for the rest, they 
have wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up, at one 
grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, 
charters, and Acts of Parliament. They have "the rights of 
men." Against these there can be no prescription ; against 
these no agreement is binding : these admit no temperament 
and no compromise : any thing withheld from their full de- 
mand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their 
rights of men let no government look for security in the length 
of its 'continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administra- 
tion. The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not 
quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old 
and beneficent government, as against the most violent tyr- 
anny, or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue 
with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question 
of competency, and a question of title. I have nothing to say 
to the clumsy subtilty* 'of their political metaphysics. Let 



THE EIGHTS OF MEN". 205 

them be their amusement in the schools. — "Ilia sejactat in aula 
— jSZolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnat." — But let them not 
break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the Earth with 
their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the great 
deep to overwhelm us. 

Par am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from 
withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to with- 
hold,) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of 
right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are 
such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil 
society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages 
for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of 
beneficence ; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. 
Men have a right to live by that rule ; they have a right to do 
justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are 
in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a 
right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of mak- 
ing their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisi- 
tions of their parents ; to the nourishment and improvement of 
their offspring ; to instruction in life, and to consolation in 
death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespass- 
ing upon others, he has a right to do for himself ; and he has a 
right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combina- 
tions of skill and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership 
men have equal rights ; but not to equal things. He that has 
but five shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, 
as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger propor- 
tion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the prod- 
uct of the joint stock ; and as to the share of power, authority, 
and direction which each individual ought to have in the man- 
agement of the State, that I must deny to be amongst the 
direct original rights of man in civil society ; for I have in my 
contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing 
to be settled by convention. 

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that conven- 
tion must be its law. That convention must limit and modify 
all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. 
Every sort of legislative, judicial, and executory powers are its 
creatures. They can have no being in any other state of 
things ; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of 
civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its exist- 
ence ? rights which are absolutely repugnant to it ? One of the 
first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its 
fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own 
cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the 
first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge 



206 BUEKE. 

for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right 
to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, 
abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature. 
Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state 
together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of 
determining what it is in points the most essential to him. 
That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in 
trust of the whole of it. 

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which 
may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in 
much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of ab- 
stract perfection : but their abstract perfection is their practi- 
cal defect. By having a right to every thing they want every 
thing. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to 
provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants 
should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is 
to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient re- 
straint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the 
passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in 
the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclina- 
tions of men should frequently be thwarted, their will con- 
trolled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can 
only be done by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exer- 
cise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions 
which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the 
restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned 
among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions 
vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modi- 
fications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule ; and 
nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle. 

The moment you abate any thing from the full rights of men, 
each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limita- 
tion upon those rights, from that moment the whole organi- 
zation of government becomes a consideration of convenience. 
This it is which makes the constitution of a State, and the due 
distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and 
complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human na- 
ture and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate 
or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the 
mechanism of civil institutions. The State is to have recruits 
to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use 
of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The 
question is upon the method of procuring and administering 
them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the 
aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor 
of metaphysics.— Iiejlections, &c. 






ABUSE OF HISTORY. 207 



• ABUSE OF HISTOEY. 

"We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. 
On the eontrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our 
minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume 
is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future 
wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It 
may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offen- 
sive and defensive weapons for parties in Church and State, and 
supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving, dissensions 
and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, 
for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by 
pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, un- 
governed zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which 
shake the public with the same 

" troublous storms that toss 
The private state, and make the life un sweet." 

These vices are the causes of those storms. Eeligion, morals, 
laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the 
pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some specious ap- 
pearance of a real good. You would not secure men from 
tyranny and sedition, by rooting out of the mind the principles 
to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did, you 
would root out every thing that is valuable in the human breast. 
As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instru- 
ments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, sen- 
ates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains. 
You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be 
no more monarchs, nor ministers of State, nor of the Gospel ; 
no interpreters of law ; no general officers ; no public councils. 
You might change the names. The things in some shape must 
remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the 
community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise 
men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names ; to the 
causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs 
by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they ap- 
pear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. 
Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts, and 
the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more invent- 
ive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. 
The very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmi- 
grates ; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change 
of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the 
fresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad, it continues 



208 BURKE. 

its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcass, or demolishing 
the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and ap- 
paritions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus 
with all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of his- 
tory, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and 
cruelty, whilst, under colour of abhorring the ill principles of 
antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same 
odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse. 

Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the 
ready instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the 
infamous massacre of St Bartholomew. What should we say 
to those who could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this 
day the abominations and horrors of that time ? They are in- 
deed brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as they are, it 
is not difficult to make them dislike it ; because the politicians 
and fashionable teachers have no interest in giving their pas- 
sions exactly the same direction. Still, however, they find it 
their interest to keep the same savage dispositions alive. It 
was but the other day that they caused this very massacre to 
be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of 
those who committed it. In this tragic farce they produced the 
Cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function, ordering general 
slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to make the Parisians 
abhor persecution, and loathe the effusion of blood? No ; it 
was to teach them to persecute their own pastors ; it was to ex- 
cite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their clergy, to an 
alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it 
ought to exist at all, ought to exist not only in safety, but in 
reverence. It was to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which 
one would think had been gorged sufficiently) by variety and 
seasoning ; and to quicken them to an alertness in new murders 
and massacres, if it should suit the purpose of the Guises of the 
day. An assembly, in which sat a multitude of priests and 
prelates, was obliged to suffer this indignity at its door. The 
author was not sent to the galleys, nor the players to the house 
of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players 
came forward to the Assembly to claim the rites of that very 
religion which they had dared to expose, and to show their 
prostituted faces in the senate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris, 
whose function was known to his people only by his prayers 
and benedictions, and his wealth only by his alms, is forced to 
abandon his house, and to fly from his flock, (as from ravenous 
wolves,) because, truly, in the sixteenth century, the Cardinal 
of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer. 4 

4 This is said upon the supposition that the story was true which charged 



ENGLISH TOLERATION. 209 

Such is the effect of the perversion of history, by those who, 
for the same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other 
part of learning. But those who will stand upon that elevation 
of reason which places centuries under our eye, and brings 
things to the true point of comparison, which obscures little 
names, and effaces the colours of little parties, and to which 
nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral quality of human 
actions, will say to the teachers of the Palais Eoyal,— The Car- 
dinal of Lorraine was the murderer of the sixteenth century, 
you have the glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth ; 
and this is the only difference between you. But history in the 
nineteenth century, better understood, and better employed, 
will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of 
both these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and 
magistrates not to retaliate, upon the speculative and inactive 
atheists of future times, the enormities committed by the pres- 
ent practical zealots and furious fanatics of that wretched error, 
which, in its quiescent state, is more than punished, whenever 
it is embraced. It will teach posterity not to make war upon 
either religion or philosophy, for the abuse which the hypocrites 
of both have made of the two most valuable blessings conferred 
upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all 
things eminently favours and protects the race of man. — Beflec- 
tions, &c. 



ENGLISH TOLEEATION. 

Those of you, who have robbed the clergy, think that they 
shall easily reconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations ; 
because the clergy whom they have thus plundered, degraded, 
and given over to mockery and scorn, are of the Eoman Catho- 
lic, that is, of their own pretended persuasion. I have no doubt 
that some miserable bigots will be found here, as well as else- 
where, who hate sects and parties different from their own, 
more than they love the substance of religion ; and who are 
more angry with those who differ from them in their particular 
plans and systems, than displeased with those who attack the 
foundation of our common hope. These men will write and 
speak on the subject in the manner that is to be expected from 
their temper and character. Burnet says that, when he was in 
France, in the year 1683, "the method which carried over the 

the Cardinal of Lorraine -with instigating the St. Bartholeniew massacre : but in 
fact the Cardinal had nothing to do with that massacre, nor was he in France at 
the time. 



210 BURKE. 



men of the finest parts to Popery was this,— they brought 
themselves to doubt of the whole Christian religion. When 
that was once done, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what 
side or form they continued outwardly." If this was then the 
ecclesiastical policy of France, it is what they have since but too 
much reason to repent of. They preferred atheism to a form 
of religion not agreeable to their ideas. They succeeded in de- 
stroying that form ; . and atheism has succeeded in destroying 
them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story ; because I 
have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is 
" much too much ") amongst ourselves. The humour, however, 
is not general. 

The teachers who reformed our religion in England bore no 
sort of resemblance to your present reforming doctors in Paris. 
Perhaps they were (like those whom they opposed) rather more 
than could be wished under the influence of a party spirit ; but 
they were more sincere believers ; men of the most fervent and 
exalted piety ; ready to die (as some of them did die) like true 
heroes in defence of their particular ideas of Christianity ; as 
they would with equal fortitude, and more cheerfully, for that 
stock of general truth, for the branches of which they con- 
tended with their blood. These men would have disavowed 
with horror those Wretches who claimed a fellowship with them 
upon no other titles than those of their having pillaged the per- 
sons with whom they maintained controversies, and their hav- 
ing despised the common religion, for the purity of which they 
exerted themselves with a zeal, which unequivocally bespoke 
their highest reverence for the substance of that system which 
they wished to reform. Many of their descendants have re- 
tained the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict) with more 
moderation. They do not forget that justice and mercy are 
substantial parts of religion. Impious men do not recom- 
mend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty 
towards any description of their fellow-creatures. 

We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their 
spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all 
opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of 
small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The 
species of benevolence, which arises from contempt, is no true 
charity. There are in England abundance of men who tolerate 
in the true spirit of toleration. They think the dogmas of relig- 
ion, though in different degrees, are all of moment ; and that 
amongst them there is, as amongst all things of value, a just 
ground of preference. They favour, therefore, and they toler- 
ate. They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but 
because they respect justice. They would reverently and affec- 



n 

it 






HOW A WISE STATESMAN PROCEEDS. 21 L 

tionately protect all religions, because they love and venerate 
the great principle upon which they all agree, and the great ob- 
ject to which they are all directed. They begin more and more 
plainly to discern that we have all a common cause, as against 
a common enemy. They will not be so misled by the spirit of 
faction, as not to distinguish what is done in favour of their 
subdivision from those acts of hostility which, through some 
particular description, are aimed at the whole corps, in which 
they themselves, under another denomination, are included. 
It is impossible for me to say what may be the character of 
every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the 
greater part ; and for them, I must tell you, that sacrilege is no 
part of their doctrine of good works ; that, so far from calling 
you into their fellowship on such title, if your professors are 
admitted to their communion, they must carefully conceal their 
doctrine of the lawfulness of the proscription of innocent men ; 
and that they must make restitution of all stolen goods what- 
soever. Till then they are none of ours. — Reflections, <fcc. 



HOW A WISE STATESMAN PROCEEDS. 

There are moments in the fortune of States, when particular 
men are called to make improvements by great mental exertion. 
In those moments, even when they seem to enjoy the confi- 
dence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full 
authority, they have not always apt instruments. A politician, 
to do great things, looks for a power, what our workmen call a 
purchase ; and if he finds that power, in politics as in mechan- 
ics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institu- 
tions, in my opinion, was found a great power for the mechanism 
of political benevolence. There were revenues with a public 
direction ; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to 
public purposes, without any other than public ties and public 
principles ; men without the possibility of converting the estate 
of the community into a private fortune ; men denied to self- 
interests, whose avarice is for some community ; men to whom 
personal poverty is honour, and implicit obedience stands in 
the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to the possi- 
bility of making such things when he wants them. The winds 
blow as they list. These institutions are the products of enthu- 
siasm ; they are the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot 
create materials ; they are the gifts of Nature or of chance ; 
her pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies cor- 



212 BUKKE. 

porate and their fortunes are things particularly suited to a 
man who has long views ; who meditates designs that require 
time in fashioning, and which propose duration when they are 
accomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be 
mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, having ob- 
tained the command and direction of such a power as existed in 
the wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations 
as those which you have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way 
of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country. 
On the view of this subject, a thousand uses suggest themselves 
to a contriving mind. To destroy any power, growing wild 
from the rank productive force of the human mind, is almost 
tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the ap- 
parently active properties of bodies in the material. It would 
be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to 
destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power 
of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies 
always existed in Mature, and they were always discernible. 
They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some 
no better than a sport to children ; until contemplative ability, 
combining with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued 
them to use, and rendered them at once the most powerful and 
the most tractable agents, in subservience to the great views 
and designs of men. Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental 
and whose bodily labour you might direct, and so many hun- 
dred thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy nor 
superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to wield ? Had 
you no way of using the men, but by converting monks into pen- 
sioners ? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account, 
but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? 
If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in 
its natural course. Your politicians do not understand their 
trade ; and therefore they sell their tools. 

But the institutions savour of superstition in their very 
principle ; and they nourish it by a permanent and standing in- 
fluence ? This I do not mean to dispute ; but this ought not to 
hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any resources 
which may thence be furnished for the public advantage. You 
derive benefits from many dispositions and many passions of 
the human mind, which are of as doubtful a colour, in the moral 
eye, as superstition itself. It was your business to correct and 
mitigate every thing which was noxious in this passion, as in all 
the passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible 
vices ? In its possible excess I think it becomes a very great 
evil. It is, however, a moral subject ; and of course admits of 
all degrees and all modifications. Superstition is the religion of 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REFORM. 213 

feeble minds ; and they must be tolerated in an intermixture 
of it, in some trifling or some enthusiastic shape or other, else 
you will deprive weak minds of a resource found necessary to 
the strongest. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, 
in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world ; in a 
confidence in His declarations, and an imitation of His perfec- 
tions. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the great 
end ; it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who as such are not 
admirers, (not admirers at least of the Munera Terrce,) are not 
violently attached to these things, nor do they violently hate 
them. Wisdom is not the most severe corrector of folly. They 
are the rival follies, which mutually wage so unrelenting a war ; 
and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as they can 
happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on the one side or the 
other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter: but if, in 
the contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy 
concerning things in their nature not made to produce such 
heats, a prudent man were obliged to make a choice of what 
errors and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, 
perhaps he would think the superstition which builds to be 
more tolerable than that which demolishes ; that which adorns 
a country, than that which deforms it ; that which endows, 
than that which plunders ; that which disposes to mistaken be- 
neficence, than that which stimulates to real injustice ; that 
which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than 
that which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of their 
self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the ques- 
tion between the ancient founders of monkish superstition, and 
the superstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour.— 
Reflections, &c. 



TEUE PRINCIPLES OF REFORM. 

I AM convinced that there are men of considerable parts 
among the popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of 
them display eloquence in their speeches and their writings. 
This cannot be without powerful and cultivated talents. But 
eloquence may exist without a proportionable degree of wis- 
dom. When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish. 
What they have done towards the support of their system be- 
speaks no ordinary men. In the system itself, taken as the 
scheme of a republic constructed for procuring the prosperity 
and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and 
grandeur of the State, I confess myself unable to find out any 



214 BURKE. 

thing which displays, in a single instance, the work of a com- 
prehensive and disposing mind, or even the provisions of a 
vulgar prudence. Their purpose everywhere seems to have 
been to evade and slip aside from difficulty. This it has been 
the glory of the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to 
Overcome ; and, when they had overcome the first difficulty, to 
turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficul- 
ties ; thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science ; 
and even to push forward, beyond the reach of their original 
thoughts, the landmarks of the human understanding itself. 
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme or- 
dinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us 
better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. Pater 
ipse colendi hand facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with 
us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antago- 
nist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges 
us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us 
to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be 
superficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such 
a task, it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and 
little fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the world 
created governments with arbitrary powers. They created the 
late arbitrary monarchy of France. They have created the ar- 
bitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to 
be supplied by the plenitude of force. They get nothing by it. 
Commencing their labours on a principle of sloth, they have the 
common fortune of slothful men. The difficulties, which they 
rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again in their 
course ; they multiply and thicken on them ; they are involved, 
through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without 
limit, and without direction ; and, in conclusion, the whole of 
their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure. 

It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has obliged 
the arbitrary Assembly of France to commence their schemes 
of reform with abolition and total destruction. But is it in 
destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? Your 
mob can do this as well at least as your assemblies. The shal- 
lowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to 
that task. Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an 
hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up 
in a hundred years. The errors and defects of old establish- 
ments are visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point 
them out ; and, where absolute power is given, it requires but a 
word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together. 
The same lazy but restless disposition, which loves sloth and 
hates quiet, directs the politicians, when they come to work for 



TKUE PRINCIPLES OF REFOR3I. 215 

supplying the place of what they have destroyed. To make 
every thing the reverse of what they have seen, is quite as easy 
as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been 
tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of 
what has not existed ; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope 
have all the wide field of imagination, in which they may expa- 
tiate with little or no opposition. 

At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing. 
When the useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and 
what is superadded is to be fitted to what is retained, a vigor- 
ous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of 
comparison and combination, and the resources of an under- 
standing fruitful in expedients, are to be exercised; they are 
to be exercised in a continued conflict with the combined force 
of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that rejects all improve- 
ment, and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted with every 
thing of which it is in possession. But you may object,— "A 
process of this kind is slow. It is not fit for an assembly, 
which glories in performing in a few months the work of ages. 
Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might take up many 
years." Without question it might ; and it ought. It is one of 
the excellences of a method in which time is amongst the as- 
sistants, that its operation is slow, and in some cases almost 
imperceptible. If circumspection and caution are a part of 
wisdom when we work only upon inanimate matter, surely they 
become a part of duty too, when the subject of our demolition 
and construction is not brick and timber, but sentient beings, 
by the sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits, 
multitudes may be rendered miserable. But it seems as if it 
were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart 
and an undoubting confidence are the sole qualifications for a 
perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high 
office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensi- 
bility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear 
himself. It may be allowed to his temperament to catch his 
ultimate object with an intuitive glance ; but his movements 
towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it 
is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means. 
There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to 
produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the 
good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than our 
force. If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of 
fashion in Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you, that 
in my course I have known, and, according to my measure, 
have co-operated with great men ; and I have never yet seen 
any plan which has not been mended by the observations of 



216 BURKE. 

those who were much inferior in understanding to the person 
who took the lead in the business. By a slow but well-sus- 
tained progress, the effect of each step is watched ; the good or 
ill success of the first gives light to us in the second ; and so, 
from light to light, we are conducted with safety through the 
whole series. We see that the parts of the system do not 
clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are 
provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possi- 
ble sacrificed to another. We compensate, we reconcile, we 
balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the 
various anomalies and contending principles that are found in 
the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises, not an ex- 
cellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an excellence in 
composition. Where the great interests of mankind are con- 
cerned through a long succession of generations, that succes- 
sion ought to be admitted to some share in the counsels 
which are so deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the 
work itself requires the aid of more minds than one age can 
furnish. It is from this view of things that the best legislators 
have been often satisfied with the establishment of some sure, 
solid, and ruling principle in government; a power like that 
which some of the philosophers have called a plastic nature ; 
and, having fixed the principle, they have left it afterwards to 
its own operation. 

To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a presiding 
principle, and a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of pro- 
found wisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a 
bold, hardy genius, are only proof s of a deplorable want of abil- 
ity. By their violent haste and their defiance of the processes 
of Nature, they are delivered over blindly to every projector 
and adventurer, to every alchymist and empiric. They despair 
of turning to account any thing that is common. Diet is noth- 
ing in their system of remedy. The worst of it is, that this 
their despair of curing common distempers by regular methods 
arises not only from defect of comprehension, but, I fear, from 
some malignity of disposition. Your legislators seem to have 
taken their opinions of all professions, ranks, and offices, from 
the declamations and buffooneries of satirists, who would them- 
selves be astonished if they were held to the letter of their own 
descriptions. By listening only to these, your leaders regard 
all things only on the side of their vices and faults, and view 
those vices and faults under every colour of exaggeration. It 
is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical, that, in 
general, those who are habitually employed in finding and dis- 
playing faults are unqualified for the work of reformation ; 
because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of 






FANATICISM OF LIBEKTY. 217 

the fair and good, but by habit they come to take no delight in 
the contemplation of those things. By hating vices too much, 
they come to love men too little. It is therefore not wonderful 
that they should be indisposed and unable to serve them. 
From hence arises the complexional disposition of some of your 
guides to pull every thing in pieces. At this malicious game 
they display the whole of their quadrimanous activity. As to 
the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent writers, brought forth 
purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents, to rouse atten- 
tion and excite surprise, are taken up by these gentlemen, not 
in the spirit of the original authors, as means of cultivating 
their taste and improving their style. These paradoxes become 
with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed 
in regulating the most important concerns of the State. Cicero 
ludicrously describes Cato as endeavouring to act, in the com- 
monwealth, upon the school paradoxes which exercised the 
wits of the junior students in the Stoic philosophy. If this was 
true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the manner of 
some persons who lived about his time, — pede nudo Catonem. 
Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the se- 
cret of his principles of composition. That acute though eccen- 
tric observer had perceived that, to strike and interest the 
public, the marvellous must be produced ; that the marvellous 
of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effects ; that 
giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which suc- 
ceeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which belonged 
to their age ; that now nothing was left to the writer but that 
species of the marvellous which might still be produced, and 
with as great an effect as ever, though in another way ; that is, 
the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraor- 
dinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes 
in politics and morals. I believe that, were Eousseau alive, and 
in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the prac- 
tical frenzy of his scholars, who in their paradoxes are servile 
imitators, and even in their incredulity discover an implicit 
faith. — Reflections, &c. 



FANATICISM OF LIBERTY. 

The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in 
all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered 
with the "all-atoning name" of liberty. In some people I see 
great liberty indeed ; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, 



218 BURKE. 

degrading servitude. But what is liberty without wisdom and 
without virtue ? It is the greatest of all possible evils ; for it is 
folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those 
who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it dis- 
graced by incapable heads, on account of their having high- 
sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments 
of liberty I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart ; 
they enlarge and liberalize our minds ; they animate our cour- 
age in a time of conflict. Old as I am, I read the fine raptures 
of Lucan and Corneille with pleasure. Neither do I wholly 
condemn the little arts and devices of popularity. They facili- 
tate the carrying of many points of moment ; they keep the 
people together ; they refresh the mind in its exertions ; and 
they diffuse occasional gayety over the severe brow of moral 
freedom. Every politician ought to sacrifice to the graces, and 
to join compliance with reason. But in such an undertaking as 
that in France, all these subsidiary sentiments and artifices are 
of little avail. To make a government requires no great pru- 
dence. Settle the seat of power ; teach obedience ; and the 
work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not 
necessary to guide ; it only requires to let go the rein. But to 
form a free government, that is, to temper together these oppo- 
site elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, 
requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, 
and combining mind. This I do not find in those who take the 
lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so mis- 
erably deficient as they appear. I rather believe it. It would 
put them below the common level of human understanding. 
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an 
auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the 
State, will be of no service. They will become flatterers 
instead of legislators ; the instruments, not the guides, of the 
people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of 
liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, 
he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will pro- 
duce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be 
raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigma- 
tized as the virtue of cowards ; and compromise as the pru- 
dence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit 
which may enable him to temper and moderate, on some occa- 
sions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propa- 
gating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards 
defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have 
aimed. — Bejlections, &c. 



THE ETHrCS OT VAKITY. 219 



THE ETHICS OF VANITY. 5 

Those who have made the exhibition of the 14th of July are 
capable of every evil. 6 They do not commit crimes for their 
designs ; but they form designs that they may commit crimes. 
It is not their necessity, but their nature, that impels them. 
They are modern philosophers ; which when you say of them 
you express every thing that is ignoble, savage, and hard- 
hearted. 

Besides the sure tokens which are given by the spirit of their 
particular arrangements, there are some characteristic linea- 
ments in the general policy of your tumultuous despotism, 
which, in my opinion, indicate, beyond a doubt, that no revolu- 
tion whatsoever in their disposition is to be expected. I mean 
their scheme of educating the rising generation, the principles 
which they intend to instil, and the sympathies which they 
wish to form in the mind, at the season in which it is the most 
susceptible. Instead of forming their young minds to that do- 
cility, to that modesty, which are the grace and charm of youth, 
to an admiration of famous examples, and to an averseness 
to any thing which approaches to pride, petulance, and self- 
conceit, (distempers to which that time of life is of itself suffi- 
ciently liable,) they artificially foment thes^evil dispositions, 
and even form them into springs of action. Nothing ought to 
be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by 
public authority. So recommended, they soon form the char- 
acter of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, limited in- 
deed is the extent, of a virtuous institution. But if education 
takes in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt but that 
it will operate with abundant energy, and to an extent indefi- 
nite. The magistrate, who in favour of freedom thinks himself 
obliged to suffer all sorts of publications, is under a stricter 

5 The paper -which furnishes the pages under this heading was published in 
February, 1791; its full title being, " A Letter to a Member of the National As- 
sembly; in Answer to some Objections to his Book on French Affairs. 1791." 
The "book" here referred to is Reflections, cfc. 

6 The occasion here pointed out was the first anniversary of the destruction 
of the Bastile, — an event very proper indeed to be celebrated, but not with 
such circumstances of cruel mockery to the fallen and helpless as those dread- 
ful creatures chose to employ. In the paragraph preceding the one which here 
stands first, Burke describes their doings as follows : " They constructed a vast 
amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory. On this pillory they set 
their King and Queen, with an insulting figure over their heads. There they 
exposed these objects of pity and respect to all good minds to the derision of an 
unthinking and unprincipled multitude, degenerated even from the versatile 
tenderness which marks the irregular and capricious feelings of the populace." 



220 .' BURKE. 

duty than any other well to consider what sort of writers he 
shall authorize ; and shall recommend by the strongest of all 
sanctions, that is, by public honours and rewards. He ought to 
be cautious how he recommends authors of mixed or ambigu- 
ous morality. He ought to be fearful of putting into the hands 
of youth writers indulgent to the peculiarities of their own com- 
plexion, lest they should teach the humours of the professor, 
rather than the principles of the science. He ought, above all, 
to be cautious in recommending any writer who has carried 
marks of a deranged understanding ; for where there is no 
sound reason there can be no real virtue ; and madness is ever 
vicious and malignant. 

The Assembly proceeds on maxims the very reverse of these. 
The Assembly recommends to its youth a study of the bold ex- 
perimenters of morality. Everybody knows that there is a 
great dispute amongst their leaders, which of them is the best 
resemblance of Rousseau. In truth, they all resemble him. His 
blood they transfuse into their minds and into their manners. 
Him they study ; him they meditate ; him they turn over in all 
the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day, 
or the debaucheries of the night. Rousseau is their canon of 
holy writ; in his life he is their canon of Polycletus ; 7 he is 
their standard figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, 
as a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of 
Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles of their poor 
and the bells of their churches. If an author had written like a 
great genius on geometry, though his practical and speculative 
morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear that, in 
voting the statue, they honoured only the geometrician. But 
Eousseau is a moralist, or he is nothing. It is impossible, 
therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their 
design in choosing the author with whom they have begun to 
recommend a course of studies. 

Their great problem is to find a substitute for all the princi- 
ples which hitherto have been employed to regulate the human 
will and action. They find dispositions in the mind of such 
force and quality as may fit men, far better than the old mo- 
rality, for the purposes of such a State as theirs, and may go 
much further in supporting their power, and destroying their 
enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, se- 
ductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True hu- 

7 Polycletus was a statuary, who stood at the head of the school of Argos, 
and was considered inferior only to Phidias, who was at the same time at the 
head of the Athenian school. His most celebrated work was a statue of a 
Spear-bearer, which became known as " the Canon," because it embodied a per- 
fect representation of the ideal of the human figure. 



THE ETHICS OF VANITY. 221 

mility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low but deep 
and firm foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful 
in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have 
totally discarded. Their object is to merge all natural and all 
social sentiment in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and 
conversant in little things, vanity is of little moment. When 
full grown, it is the worst of vices, and the occasional mimic of 
them all. It makes the whole man false. It leaves nothing 
sincere or trustworthy about him. His best qualities are poi- 
soned and perverted by it, and operate exactly as the worst. 
When your lords had many writers as immoral as the object of 
their statue, (such as Voltaire and others,) they chose Rous- 
seau ; because in him that peculiar vice which they wished to 
erect into a ruling virtue was by far the most conspicuous. 

We have had the great professor and founder of the philoso- 
phy of vanity in England. As I had good opportunities of know- 
ing his proceedings almost from day to day, he left no doubt on 
my mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his 
heart or to guide his understanding, but vanity. With this vice 
he was possessed to a degree little short of madness. It is from 
the same deranged, eccentric vanity, that this, the insane Soc- 
rates of the National Assembly, was impelled to publish a mad 
confession of his mad faults, and to attempt a new sort of glory 
from bringing hardily to light the obscure and vulgar vices, 
which we know may sometimes be blended with eminent tal- 
ents. He has not observed on the nature of vanity who does 
not know that it is omnivorous ; that it has no choice in its 
food ; that it is fond to talk even of its own faults and vices, as 
what will excite surprise and draw attention, and what will pass 
at worst for openness and candour. 

It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity makes even of 
hypocrisy, that has driven Rousseau to record a life not so 
much as chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or 
even distinguished by a single good action. It is such a life he 
chooses to offer to the attention of mankind. It is such a life 
that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the face of his Creator, 
whom he acknowledges only to brave. Your Assembly, know- 
ing how much more powerful example is found than precept, 
has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) 
for a model. To him they erect their first statue. From him 
they commence their series of honours and distinctions. 

It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, 
that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his 
powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence ; 
whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of com- 
mon parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and 



222 BURKE. 



sors 



want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors 
come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. 
Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of van- 
ity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as the 
tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, 
honours the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his 
beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness 
for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and 
then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal 
and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends 
his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, 
and forms her young ; but bears are not philosophers. Yanity, 
however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural 
feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affec- 
tionate father is hardly known in his parish. 

Under this philosophic instructor in the ethics of vanity, they 
have attempted in France a regeneration of the moral constitu- 
tion of man. Statesmen like your present rulers exist by every 
thing which is spurious, fictitious, and false ; by every thing 
which takes the man from his house, and sets him on a stage ; 
which makes him up an artificial creature, with painted, theatric 
sentiments, fit to be seen by the glare of candle-light, and formed 
to be contemplated at a due distance. Yanity is too apt to pre- 
vail in all of us, and in all countries. To the improvement of 
Frenchmen it seems not absolutely necessary that it should be 
taught upon system. But it is plain that the present rebellion 
was its legitimate offspring, and it is piously fed by that rebel- 
lion with a daily dole. 

If the system of institution recommended by the Assembly 
be false and theatric, it is because their system of government 
is of the same character. To that, and to that alone, it is 
strictly conformable. To understand either, we must connect 
the morals with the politics of the legislators. Your practical 
philosophers, systematic in every thing, have wisely begun at 
the source. As the relation between parents and children is 
the first amongst the elements of vulgar, natural morality ; 
they erect statues to a wild, ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted 
father, of fine general feelings ; a lover of his kind, but a hater 
of his kindred. Your masters reject the duties of this vulgar 
relation, as contrary to liberty ; as not founded in the social 
compact ; and not binding according to the rights of men ; be- 
cause the relation is not, of course, the result of free election; 
never so on the side of the children, not always on the part of 
the parents. 

The next relation which they regenerate by their statues to 
Rousseau, is that which is next in sanctity to that of a father. 



THE ETHICS OF VANITY. 223 

They differ from those old-fashioned thinkers who considered 
pedagogues as sober and venerable characters, and allied to the 
parental. The moralists of the dark times preceptorem sanctt 
voluere parentis esse loco.* In this age of light, they teach the 
people that preceptors ought to be in the place of gallants. 
They systematically corrupt a very corruptible race, (for some 
time a growing nuisance amongst you,) a set of pert, petulant 
literators, to whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unos- 
tentatious duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit 
and pleasure, of gay, young military sparks, and danglers at 
toilets. They call on the rising generation in France to take a 
sympathy in the adventures and fortunes, and they endeavour 
to engage their sensibility on the side, of pedagogues who be- 
tray the most awful family trusts, and vitiate their female 
pupils. They teach the people that the debauchers of virgins, 
almost in the arms of their parents, may be safe inmates in the 
houses, and even fit guardians of the honour, of those husbands 
who succeed legally to the office which the young literators had 
pre-occupied, without asking leave of law or conscience. 

Thus they dispose of all the family relations of parents and 
children, husbands and wives. Through this same instructor, 
by whom they corrupt the morals, they corrupt the taste. Taste 
and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller 
and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the reg- 
ulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into 
virtue ; but it recommends virtue with something like the blan- 
dishments of pleasure; and it infinitely abates the evils of vices.- 
Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is totally desti- 
tute of taste in any sense of the word. Your masters, who are 
his scholars, conceive that all refinement has an aristocratic 
character. The last age had exhausted all its powers in giving 
a grace and nobleness to our natural appetites, and in raising 
them into a higher class and order than seemed justly to belong 
to them. Through Rousseau, your masters are resolved to 
destroy these aristocratic prejudices. The passion called l.o\*e 
has so general and powerful an influence ; it makes so much of 
the entertainment, and indeed so much of the occupation, of 
that part of life which decides the character for ever, that the 
mode and the principles on which it engages the sympathy, and 
strikes the imagination, become of the utmost importance to 
the morals and manners of every society. Your rulers were 
well aware of this ; and, in their system of changing your man- 
ners to accommodate them to their politics, they found nothing 

8 That is, " chose to have the teacher stand in the place of a revered parent." 



224 



BUKKE. 



so convenient as Rousseau. Through him they teach men to 
love after the fashion of philosophers ; that is, they teach to 
men, to Frenchmen, a love without gallantry ; a love without 
any thing of that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility 
which places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments 
of life. Instead of this passion, naturally allied to grace and 
manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned, indeli- 
cate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness ; 
of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensual- 
ity. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in 
their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic 
gallantry, the Nouvelle Eloise. 

When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors is broken 
down, and your families are no longer protected by decent 
pride and salutary domestic prejudice, there is but one step to 
a frightful corruption. The rulers in the National Assembly 
are in good hopes that the females of the first families in 
France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, 
pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets de chambre, and other 
active citizens of that description, who having the entry into 
your houses, and being half domesticated by their situation, 
may be blended with you by regular and irregular relations. 
By a law they have made these people your equals. By adopt- 
ing the sentiments of Rousseau they have made them your 
rivals. In this manner these great legislators complete their 
plan of levelling, and establish their rights of men on a sure 
foundation. 

I am certain that the writings of Eousseau lead directly to 
this kind of shameful evil. I have often wondered how he 
comes to be so much more admired and followed on the Conti- 
nent than he is here. Perhaps a secret charm in the language 
may have its share in this extraordinary difference. We cer- 
tainly perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this writer, a style 
glowing, animated, enthusiastic ; at the same time that we find 
it. lax, diffuse, and not in the best taste of composition ; all the 
members of the piece being pretty equally laboured and ex- 
panded, without any due selection or subordination of parts. 
He is generally too much on the stretch, and his manner has 
little variety. We cannot rest upon any of his works, though 
they contain observations which occasionally discover a consid- 
erable insight into human nature. But his doctrines, on the 
whole, are so inapplicable to real life and manners, that we 
never dream of drawing from them any rule for laws or con- 
duct, or for fortifying or illustrating any thing by a reference 
to his opinions. They have with us the fate of older paradoxes, 



THE ETHICS OP VANITY. 225 

Cum ven turn ad verum est, sensus moresque repugnant, 
Atque ipsa utilitas justi prope mater et aequi. 9 

Perhaps bold speculations are more acceptable because more 
new to you than to us, who have been long since satiated with 
them. We continue, as in the two last ages, to read, more gen- 
erally than I believe is now done on the Continent, the authors 
of sound antiquity. These occupy our minds. They give us 
another taste and turn ; and will not suffer us to be more than 
transiently amused with paradoxical morality. It is not that 
I consider this writer as wholly destitute of just notions. 
Amongst his irregularities, it must be reckoned that he is some- 
times moral, and moral in a very sublime strain. But the gen- 
eral spirit and tendency of his works is mischievous ; and the 
more mischievous for this mixture: for perfect depravity of 
sentiment is not reconcilable with eloquence ; and the mind 
(though corruptible, not complexionally vicious) would reject, 
and throw off Avith disgust, a lesson of pure and unmixed evil. 
These writers make even virtue a pander to vice. 

However, I less consider the author than the system of the 
Assembly in perverting morality through his means. This I 
confess makes me nearly despair of any attempt upon the minds 
of their followers, through reason, honour, or conscience. The 
great object of your tyrants is to destroy the gentlemen of 
Prance ; and for that purpose they destroy, to the best of their 
power, all the effect of those relations which may render con- 
siderable men powerful, or even safe. To destroy that order, 
they vitiate the whole community. That no means may exist 
of confederating against their tyranny, by the false sympathies 
of this Nouvelle Eloise they endeavour to subvert those princi- 
ples of domestic trust and fidelity which form the discipline of 
social life. They propagate principles by which every servant 
may think it, if not his duty, at least his privilege, to betray his 
master. By these principles, every considerable father of a 
family loses the sanctuary of his house. Debet sua cuique domus 
esse perfugium tutissimum, Y) says the law, which your legislators 
have taken so much pains first to decry, then to repeal. They 
destroy all the tranquillity and security of domestic life ; turn- 
ing the asylum of the house into a gloomy prison, where the 
father of the family must drag out a miserable existence, en- 
dangered in proportion to the apparent means of his safety ; 
where he is worse than solitary in a crowd of domestics, and 
more apprehensive from his servants and inmates than from 

9 To come to the truth of the matter, the feelings and morals fight against 
them, and even utility itself, which is almost the mother of right and equity. 

10 Every man's own home ought to be his securest refuge 



220 BURKE. 



the hired, bloodthirsty mob without-doors, who are ready to 
pull him to the lanterne. 

It is thus, and for the same end, that they endeavour to 
destroy that tribunal of conscience which exists independently 
of edicts and decrees. Your despots govern by terror. They 
know that he who fears God fears nothing else ; and therefore 
they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their 
Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of 
fear which generates true courage. Their object is, that their 
fellow-citizens may be under the dominion of no awe, but that 
of their committee of research, and of their lanterne. 11 



; 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 1 

I do not wish to enter very much at large into the discussions 
which diverge and ramify in all ways from this productive sub- 
ject. But there is one topic upon which I hope I shall be 
excused in going a little beyond my design. The factions, now 
so busy amongst us, in order to divest men of all love for their 
country, and to remove from their minds all duty with regard 
to the State, endeavour to propagate an opinion that the people, 
in forming their commonwealth, have by no means parted with 
their power over it. This is an impregnable citadel, to which 
these gentlemen retreat whenever they are pushed by the bat- 
tery of laws and usages, and positive conventions. Indeed it is 
such and of so great force, that all they have done, in defending 
their outworks, is so much time and labour thrown away. Dis- 
cuss any of their schemes, — their answer is, It is the act of the 

11 The character here given of Rousseau, and the critical remarks on the style 
aiil tendency of his writings, were at the time justly admired for their originality 
and depth ; and were regarded as not inferior to any thing that came from the 
author's pen. 

1 The pages which follow, under this heading, are from a hook published in 
1791, with the title, "An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, in Consequence 
of some late Discussions in Parliament, relative to the Reflections on the French 
Revolution. 1791." The work is a defence of the doctrines maintained in the 
Reflections. Not long after the appearance of the previous hook, the radical sec- 
tion of the Whigs, Avith Fox at their head, got so worked up against the doc- 
trines there taught, and against the author's course in Parliament, that they 
formally and publicly read him out of the party, as a deserter or renegade. 
They did good service to their country, to humanity, and to the cause of litera- 
ture, by thus provoking him to write the Appeal, which completed whatever 
may have been wanting to the full triumph of his former work. — In these pages, 
as will readily be seen, the author constantly speaks of himself in the third 
person. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 227 

people, and that is sufficient. Are we to deny to a majority of 
the people the right of altering even the whole frame of their 
society, if such should be their pleasure ? They may change it, 
say they, from a monarchy to a republic to-day, and to-morrow 
back again from a republic to a monarchy ; and so backward 
and forward as often as they like. They are masters of the 
commonwealth, because in substance they are themselves the 
commonwealth. The French Ee volution, say they, was the act 
of the majority of the people ; and if the majority of any other 
people, the people of England for instance, wish to make the 
same change, they have the same right. 

Just the same undoubtedly ; that is, none at all. Neither the 
few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in 
any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obliga- 
tion. The Constitution of a country being once settled upon 
some compact, tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of 
force to alter it, without the breach of the covenant, or the con- 
sent of all the parties. Such is the nature of a contract. And 
the votes of a majority of the people, whatever their infamous 
flatterers may teach in order to corrupt their minds, cannot 
alter the moral any more than they can alter the physical es- 
sence of things. The people are not to be taught to think 
lightly of their engagements to their governors ; else they 
teach governors to think lightly of their .engagements towards 
them. In that kind of game, in the end the people are sure to 
be losers. To flatter them into a contempt of faith, truth, and 
justice, is to ruin them ; for in these virtues consists their whole 
safety. To flatter any man, or any part of mankind, in any 
description, by asserting that in engagements he or they are 
free, whilst any other human creature is bound, is ultimately to 
vest the rule of morality in the pleasure of those who ought to 
be rigidly submitted to it ; to subject the sovereign reason of 
the world to the caprices of weak and giddy men. 

But as no one of us men can dispense with public or private 
faith, or with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can 
any number of us. The number engaged in crimes, instead of 
turning them into laudable acts, only augments the quantity 
and intensity of the guilt. I am well aware that men love to 
hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of 
their duty. This is of course ; because every duty is a limita- 
tion of some power. Indeed, arbitrary power is so much to the 
depraved taste of the vulgar, of the vulgar of every description, 
that almost all the dissensions which lacerate the common- 
wealth are- not concerning the manner in which it is to be exer- 
cised, but concerning the hands in which it is to be placed. 
Somewhere they are resolved to have it. Whether they desire 



228 BURKE. 

it to be vested in the many or the few, depends with most men 
upon the chance which'they imagine they themselves may have 
of partaking in the exercise of that arbitrary sway, in the one 
mode or in the other. 

It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after power. But it 
is very expedient that by moral instruction they should be 
taught, and by their civil Constitutions they should be com- 
pelled, to put many restrictions upon the immoderate exercise 
of it, and the inordinate desire. The best method of obtaining 
these two great points forms the important, but at the same 
time the difficult, problem to the true statesman. He thinks of 
the place in which political power is to be lodged, with no other 
attention than as it may render the more or the less practicable 
its salutary restraint, and its prudent direction. For this reason 
no legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly placed 
the seat of active power in the hands of the multitude ; because 
there it admits of no control, no regulation, no steady direction 
whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority ; 
but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and 
impossible. 

As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot, under popular 
sway, be effectually restrained, the other great object of politi- 
cal arrangement, the means of abating an excessive desire of it, 
is in such a State still worse provided for. The democratic 
commonwealth is the foodful nurse of ambition. Under the 
other forms it meets with many restraints. Whenever, in 
States which have had a democratic basis, the legislators have 
endeavoured to put restraints upon ambition, their methods 
were as violent as in the end they were ineffectual ; as violent 
indeed as any the most jealous despotism could invent. The 
ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less the 
State which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambi- 
tion, one of the natural, inbred, incurable distempers of a pow- 
erful democracy. 

But to return from this short digression, which however is 
not wholly foreign to the question of the effect of the will of the 
majority upon the form or the existence of their society. I 
cannot too often recommend it to the serious consideration of 
all men, who think civil society to be within the province of 
moral jurisdiction, that if we owe to it any duty, it is not subject 
to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even 
contradictory terms. Now, though civil society might be at 
first a voluntary act, (which in many cases it undoubtedly was,) 
its continuance is under a permanent, standing covenant, co- 
existing with the society ; and it attaches upon every individual 
of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 229 

warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general 
sense of mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits 
from that association ; without their choice they are subjected 
to duties in consequence of these benefits ; and without their 
choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that 
is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system 
of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as 
were never the results of our option. I allow that, if no Su- 
I>reme Ruler exists, wise to form and potent to enforce the 
moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even 
actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothe- 
sis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at 
defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer. We have but 
this one appeal against irresistible power : 

Si genus humanura et mortalia teumitis arma, 
At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi. 2 

Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of 
the Parisian philosophy, I may assume that the awful Author 
of our being is the Author of our place in the order of exist- 
ence ; and that, having disposed and marshalled us by a divine 
tactic, not according to our will, but according to His, He has, 
in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the 
part which belongs to the place assigned us. We have obliga- 
tions to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of 
any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation of 
man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations 
are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the 
pacts which we enter into with any particular person, or num- 
ber of persons amongst mankind, depends upon those prior 
obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are volun- 
tary, in others they are necessary ; but the duties are all com- 
pulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the 
duties are not matter of choice. They are dictated by the na- 
ture of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by 
which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise 
to this mysterious process of Mature are not of our making. 
But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknow- 
able, arise moral duties which, as we are able perfectly to com- 
prehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Parents may 
not be consenting to their moral relation ; but, consenting or 
not, they are bound to a long train of buithensome duties 
towards those with whom they have never made a convention 

2 If yon despise the human race and mortal weapons, yet he assured that the 
gods are mindful of right and wrong. 



230 BURKE. 

of any sort. Children are not consenting to their relation, 
but their relation, without their actual consent, binds them to 
its duties ; or rather it implies their consent, because the pre- 
sumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the 
predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a 
community with the social state of their parents, endowed with 
all the benefits, loaded with all the duties, of their situation. 
If the social ties and ligaments, spun out of those physical rela- 
tions which are the elements of the commonwealth, in most 
cases begin, and alway continue, independently of our will; so, 
without any stipulation on our own part, are we bound by that 
relation called our country, which comprehends (as it has been 
well said) "all the charities of all." 3 Nor are we left without 
powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to us, 
as it is awful and coercive. Our country is not a thing of mere 
physical locality. It consists, in a great measure, in the an- 
cient order into which we are born. We may have the same 
geographical situation, but another country ; as we may have 
the same country in another soil. The place that determines 
our duty to our country is a social, civil relation. 

These are the opinions of the author whose cause I defend. 
I lay them down, not to enforce them upon others by disputa- 
tion, but as an account of his proceedings. On them he acts ; 
and from them he is convinced that neither he nor any man, or 
number of men, have a right (except what necessity, which is 
out of and above all rule, rather imposes than bestows) to free 
themselves from that primary engagement into which every 
man born into a community as much contracts by his being 
born into it, as he contracts an obligation to certain parents by 
his having been derived from their bodies. The place of every 
man determines his duty. If you ask, Quern te Deus esse jussit ? 
You will be answered when you resolve this other question, 
Humana qua parte locatus es in re? 11 

I admit, indeed, that in morals, as in all things else, difficul- 
ties will sometimes occur. Duties will sometimes cross one 
another. Then questions will arise, which of them is to be 
placed in subordination ; which of them may be entirely super- 
seded. These doubts give rise to that part of moral science 

3 This quotation is from Cicero, Be OJflciis, i. 17; but loses much of its force 
-when thus detached from the beautiful sentence in which it stands: "Parents 
are dear, children are dear, so are kindred, so are friends; but the Avhole dear- 
ness of* all these is embraced in the one fatherland; for which what good man 
will hesitate to die, if he can thereby be of service to it? " 

4 That is, " What does the Deity require you to be ?" and, "In what human 
relation are you actually placed?" The quotations are from the Roman poet, 
Fersius. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 231 

called casuistry; which, though necessary, to be well studied by 
those who would become expert in that learning, who aim at 
becoming what, I think, Cicero somewhere calls, artifices ojji- 
ciorum, 5 requires a very solid and discriminating judgment, 
great modesty and caution, and much sobriety of mind in the 
handling ; else there is a danger that it may totally subvert 
those offices which it is its object only to methodize and 
reconcile. Duties, at their extreme bounds, are drawn very 
fine, so as to become almost evanescent. In that state some 
shade of doubt will always rest on these questions, when they 
are pursued with great subtilty. But the very habit of stating 
these extreme cases is not very laudable or safe ; because, in 
general, it is not right to turn our duties into doubts. They 
are imposed, to govern our conduct, not to exercise our inge- 
nuity ; and therefore our opinions about them ought not to be 
in a state of fluctuation, but steady, sure, and resolved. 

Amongst these nice and therefore dangerous points of casu- 
istry may be reckoned the question so much agitated in the 
present hour, Whether, after the people have discharged them- 
selves of their original power by an habitual delegation, no 
occasion can possibly occur which may justify the resumption 
of it ? This question, in this latitude, is very hard to affirm or 
deny : but I am satisfied that no occasion can justify such a 
resumption, which would not equally authorize a dispensation 
with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of them together. 
However, if in general it be not easy to determine concerning 
the lawfulness of such devious proceedings, which must be 
ever on the edge of crimes, it is far from difficult to foresee 
the perilous consequences of the resuscitation of such a power 
in the people. The practical consequences of any political 
tenet go a great way in deciding upon its value. Political 
problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood. They 
relate to good or evil. What in the result is -likely to pro- 
duce evil, is politically false ; that which is productive of good, 
politically true. 

Believing it, therefore, a question at least arduous in the 
theory, and in the practice very critical, it would become us 
to ascertain, as well as we can, what form it is that our incanta- 
tions are about to call up from darkness and the sleep of ages. 
When the supreme authority of the people is in question, 
before we attempt to extend or to confine it, we ought to fix in 
our minds, with some degree of distinctness, an idea of what 
it is we mean when we say the People. 

In a state of rude nature there is no such thing as a people. 

5 Arrangers of duties, or, men skilled in the science of duty. 



232 BURKE. 

A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. 
The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly 
artificial ; and made, like all other legal fictions, by common 
agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement 
was, is collected from the form into which the particular 
society has been cast. Any other is not their covenant. When 
men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement 
which gives its corporate form and capacity to a State, they are 
no longer a people, they have no longer a corporate existence ; 
they have no longer a legal, coactive force to bind within, nor 
a claim to be recognized abroad. They are a number of vague, 
loose individuals, and nothing more. With them all is to begin 
again. Alas ! they little know how many a weary step is to be 
taken before they can form themselves into a mass, which has 
a true politic personality. 

We hear much from men, who have not acquired their hardi- 
ness of assertion from the profundity of their thinking, about 
the omnipotence of a majority, in such a dissolution of an an- 
cient society as hath taken place in France. But, amongst men 
so disbanded, there can be no such thing as majority or minor- 
ity ; or power in any one person to bind another. The power of 
acting by a majority, which the gentlemen theorists seem to as^ 
sume so readily, after they have violated the contract out of 
which it has arisen, (if at all it existed,) must be grounded on 
two assumptions: first, that of an incorporation produced by 
unanimity ; and, secondly, an unanimous agreement that the 
act of a mere majority (say of one) shall pass with them and 
with others as the act of the whole. 

We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that 
we consider this idea of the decision of a majority as if it were 
a law of our original nature : but such constructive whole, re- 
siding in a part only, is one of the most violent fictions of posi- 
tive law that ever has been or can be made on the principles of 
artificial incorporation. Out of civil society nature knows noth- 
ing of it ; nor are men, even when arranged according to civil 
order, otherwise than by very long training, brought at all to 
submit to it. The mind is brought far more easily to acquiesce 
in the proceedings of one man, or a few, who act under a gen- 
eral procuration for the State, than in the vote of a victorious 
majority in councils in which every man has his share in the 
deliberation. For there the beaten party are exasperated and 
soured by the previous contention, and mortified by the conclu- 
sive defeat. This mode of decision, where wills may be so 
nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the smaller 
number may be the stronger force, and where apparent reason 
may be all upon one side, and on the other little else than im- 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 233 

petuous appetite, — all this must be the result of a very particu- 
lar and special convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits 
of obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a strong 
hand, vested with stationary, permanent power, to enforce this 
sort of constructive general will. What organ it is that shall 
declare the corporate mind, is so much a matter of positive ar- 
rangement, that several States, for the validity of several of their 
Acts, have required a proportion of voices much greater than 
that of a mere majority. These proportions are so entirely gov- 
erned by convention, that in some cases the minority decides. 
The laws in many countries to condemn require more than a 
mere majority ; less than an equal number to acquit. In our 
judicial trials we require unanimity either to condemn or to ab- 
solve. In some incorporations one man speaks for the whole ; 
in others, a few. Until the other day, in the Constitution of 
Poland, unanimity was required to give validity to any Act of 
their great national council or diet. This approaches much 
more nearly to rude nature than the institutions of any other 
country. Such, indeed, every commonwealth must be, without 
a positive law to recognise in a certain number the will of the 
entire body. 

If men dissolve their ancient incorporation in order to regen- 
erate their community, in that state of things each man has a 
right, if he pleases, to remain an individual. Any number of 
individuals, who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right to 
form themselves into a State apart, and wholly independent. 
If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another, this is 
conquest, and not compact. On every principle, which sup- 
poses society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive 
incorporation must be null and void. 

As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without 
universal consent, so neither have they a right to hold exclu- 
sively any lands in the name and title of a corporation. On the 
scheme of the present rulers in our neighbouring country, 
regenerated as they are, they have no more right to the terri- 
tory called France than I have. I have a right to pitch my tent 
in any unoccupied place I can find for it ; and I may apply to 
my own maintenance any part of their unoccupied soil. I may 
purchase the house or vineyard of any individual proprietoi 
who refuses his consent (and most proprietors have, as far as 
they dared, refused it) to the new incorporation. I stand in his 
independent place. Who are these insolent men calling them- 
selves the French nation, that would monopolize this fair do- 
main of Nature?. Is it because they speak a certain jargon? 
Is it their mode of chattering, to me unintelligible, that forms 
their title to my land ? Who are they who claim by prescrip- 



234 BURKE. 



tion and descent from certain gangs of banditti called Franks, 
and Burgundians, and Visigoths, of whom I may have never 
heard, and ninety-nine out of an hundred of themselves cer- 
tainly never have heard ; whilst at the very time they tell me 
that prescription and long possession form no title to property ? 
"Who are they that presume to assert that the land which I pur- 
chased of the individual, a natural person, and not a fiction of 
State, belongs to them, who in the very capacity in which they 
make their claim can exist only as an imaginary being, and in 
virtue of the very prescription which they reject and disown? 
This mode of arguing might be pushed into all the detail, so as 
to leave no sort of doubt, that on their principles, and on the 
sort of footing on which they have thought proper to place 
themselves, the crowd of men, on the other side of the channel, 
who have the impudence to call themselves a people, can never 
be the lawful, exclusive possessors of the soil. By what they 
call reasoning without prejudice, they leave not one stone upon 
another in the fabric of human society. They subvert all the 
authority which they hold, as well as all that which they have 
destroyed. 

As, in the abstract, it is perfectly clear that, out of a state of 
civil society, majority and minority are relations which can 
have no existence ; and that, in civil society, its own specific 
conventions in each corporation determine what it is that con- 
stitutes the people, so as to make their act the signification of 
the general will ; to come to particulars, it is equally clear, that 
neither in France nor in England has the original or any subse- 
quent compact of the State, expressed or implied, constituted a 
majority of men, told by the head, to be the acting people of their 
several communities. And I see as little of policy or utility as 
there is of right, in laying down a principle that a majority of 
men told by the head are to be considered as the people, and 
that as such their will is to be law. What policy can there be 
found in arrangements made in defiance of every political prin- 
ciple ? To enable men to act with the weight and character of 
a people, and to answer the ends for which they are incorpo- 
rated into that capacity, we must suppose them (by means im- 
mediate or consequential) to be in that, state of habitual social 
discipline in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more 
opulent conduct, and by conducting enlighten and protect, the 
weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods 
of fortune. When the multitude are not under this discipline, 
they can scarcely be said to be in civil society. Give once a 
certain constitution of things, which produces a variety of con- 
ditions and circumstances in a State, and there is in Nature and 
reason a principle which, for their own benefit, postpones, not 



iks, 






THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 235 

the interest, but the judgment, of those who are numero plures, 
to those who are virtute et honore majores* lumbers in a State 
(supposing, which is not the case in France, that a State does 
exist) are always of consideration ; but they are not the whole 
consideration. It is in things more serious than a play that it 
may be truly said, satis est equitem mihi plaudereJ 

A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the 
State, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of 
any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class 
of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must 
be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estima- 
tion ; to see nothing low and sordid from one's infancy ; to be 
taught to respect one's self ; to be habituated to the censorial 
inspection of the public eye ; to look early to public opinion ; to 
stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a 
large view of the wide-spread and infinitely-diversified combina- 
tions of men and affairs in a large society ; to have leisure to 
read, to reflect, to converse ; to be enabled to draw the court 
and attention of the wise and learned wherever they are to be 
found ; — to be habituated in armies to command and to obey ; 
to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honour and 
duty ; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, fore- 
sight, and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault 
is committed with impunity, and the slightest mistakes draw on 
the most ruinous consequences ; — to be led to a guarded and 
regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an 
instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and 
that you act as a reconciler between God and man ; to be em- 
ployed as. an administrator of law and justice, and to be there- 
by amongst the first benefactors to mankind ; to be a professor 
of high science, or of liberal and ingenuous art ; to be amongst 
rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp 
and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of dili- 
gence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated 
an habitual regard to commutative justice ; —these are the cir- 
cumstances of men that form what I should call a natural aris- 
tocracy, without which there is no nation. 

The state of civil society which necessarily generates this 
aristocracy is a state of nature ; and much more truly so than a 
savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is by nature rea- 
sonable ; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but 
when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated, and 
most predominates. Art is man's nature. "VVe are as much, at 

6 That is, more in number, and superior in virtue and honour. 
1 It is enough that a knight applauds me. 



236 BUKKE. 

least, in a state of nature in formed manhood as in immature 
and helpless infancy. Men, qualified in the manner I have just 
described, form in Nature, as she operates in the common modi- 
fication of society, the leading, guiding, and governing part. 
It is the soul to the body, without which the man does not exist. 
To give, therefore, no more importance, in the social order, to 
such descriptions of men than that of so many units, is a horri- 
ble usurpation. 

When great multitudes act together, under that discipline of 
Nature, I recognize the People. I acknowledge something 
that perhaps equals, and ought always to guide, the sovereignty 
of convention. In all things the voice of this grand chorus of 
national harmony ought to have a mighty and decisive influ- 
ence. But, when you disturb this harmony ; when you break 
up this beautiful order, this array of truth and nature, as well 
as of habit and prejudice ; when you separate the common sort 
of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into an 
adverse army, — I no longer know that venerable object called 
the People in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds. 
For a while they may be terrible indeed ; but in such a manner 
as wild beasts are terrible. The mind owes to them no sort of 
submission. They are, as they have always been reputed, 
rebels. They may lawfully be fought with and brought under, 
whenever an advantage offers. Those who attempt by outrage 
and violence to deprive men of any advantage which they hold 
under the laws, and to destroy the natural order of life, proclaim 
war against them. 

We have read in history of that furious insurrection of the 
common people in Prance called the Jacquerie: for this is not 
the first time that the people have been enlightened into trea- 
son, murder, and rapine. Its object was to extirpate the gentry. 
The Captal de Buche, a famous soldier of those days, dishon- 
oured the name of a gentleman and of a man by taking, for 
their cruelties, a cruel vengeance on these deluded wretches. 
It was, however, his right and his duty to make war upon them, 
and afterwards, in moderation, to bring them to punishment for 
their rebellion ; though, in the sense of the Preneh Revolution, 
and of some of our clubs, they were the people; and were truly 
so, if you will call by that appellation any majority of men told 
by the head. 

At a time not very remote from the same period (for these 
humours never have affected one of the nations without some 
influence on the other) happened several risings of the lower 
commons in England. These insurgents were certainly the 
majority of the inhabitants of the counties in which they re- 
sided ; and Cade, Ket, and Straw, at the head of their national 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 237 

guards, and fomented by certain traitors of high rank, did no 
more than exert, according to the doctrines of our and the Pa- 
risian societies, the sovereign power inherent in the majority. 

We call the time of those events a dark age. Indeed, we are 
too indulgent to our own proficiency. The Abbe John Ball un- 
derstood the rights of man as well as the Abbe Gregoire. 8 That 
reverend patriarch of sedition, and prototype of our modern 
preachers, was of opinion with the National Assembly, that all 
the evils which have fallen upon men had been caused by an 
ignorance of their " having been born and continued equal as to 
their rights." Had the populace been able to repeat that pro 
found maxim, all would have gone perfectly well with them. 
No tyranny, no vexation, no oppression, no care, no sorrow, 
could have existed in the world. This would have cured them 
like a charm for the toothache. But the lowest wretches, in 
their most ignorant state, were able at all times to talk such 
stuff ; and yet at all times have they suffered many evils and 
many oppressions, both before and since the republication by 
the National Assembly of this spell of healing potency and 
virtue. The enlightened Dr. Ball, when he wished to rekindle 
the lights and fires of his audience on this point, chose for the 
text the following couplet: 

When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman? 

Of this sapient maxim, however, I do not give him for the in- 
ventor. It seems to have been handed down by tradition, and 
had certainly become proverbial ; but whether then composed 
or only applied, thus much must be admitted, that in learning, 
sense, energy, and comprehensiveness, it is fully equal to all 
the modern dissertations on the equality of mankind ; and it 
has one advantage over them, — that it is in rhyme. 

There is no doubt that this great teacher of the rights of 
man decorated his discourse on this valuable text with lem- 
mas, theorems, scholia, corollaries, and all the apparatus of 
science, which was furnished in as great plenty and perfection 
out of the dogmatic and polemic magazines, the old horse- 
armoury of the Schoolmen, among whom the Rev. Dr. Ball was 
bred, as they can be supplied from the new arsenal at Hackney. 

8 The Abbe" Gregoire was one of the few French priests who turned against 
their order, and joined the new church of Jacobinism : to keep himself in favour 
with the revolutionary chiefs, he proposed some of their most atrocious meas- 
ures.— John Ball was a seditious preacher, who stirred up the dregs of the pop- 
ulace to an insurrection in the year 1381; here called an Abbe by way of offset 
to the French apostle of disorder who wore that title. 



238 BURKE. 

It was no doubt disposed with all the adjutancy of definition 
and division, in which (I speak it with submission) the old mar- 
shals were as able as the modern martinets. Neither can we 
deny that the philosophic auditory, when they had once ob- 
tained this knowledge, could never return to their former 
ignorance ; or, after so instructive a lecture, be in the same 
state of mind as if they had never heard it. But these poor 
people, who were not to be envied for their knowledge, but 
pitied for their delusion, were not reasoned, (that was impos- 
sible,) but beaten out of their lights. With their teacher they 
were delivered over to the lawyers ; who wrote in their blood 
the statutes of the land as harshly, and in the same sort of ink, 
as they and their teachers had written the rights of man. 

Our doctors of the day are not so fond of quoting the opinions 
of this ancient sage as they are of imitating his conduct : first, 
because it might appear, that they are not as great inventors as 
they would be thought ; and next, because, unfortunately for 
his fame, he was not successful. It is a remark liable to as few 
exceptions as any generality can be, that they who applaud 
prosperous folly, and adore triumphant guilt, have never been 
known to succour or even to pity human weakness or offence 
when they become subject to human vicissitude, and meet with 
punishment instead of obtaining power. Abating for their 
want of sensibility to the sufferings of their associates, they are 
not so much in the wrong : for madness and wickedness are 
things foul and deformed in themselves ; and stand in need of 
all the coverings and trappings of fortune to recommend them 
to the multitude. Nothing can be more loathsome in their 
naked nature. 

Aberrations like these, whether ancient or modern, unsuc- 
cessful or prosperous, are things of passage. They furnish no 
argument for supposing a multitude told by the head to be the peo- 
ple. Such a multitude can have no sort of title to alter the 
seat of power in the society, in which it ever ought to be the 
obedient, and not the ruling or presiding part. What power 
may belong to the whole mass, in which mass the natural 
aristocracy, or what by convention is appointed to represent 
and strengthen it, acts in its proper place, with its proper 
weight, and without being subjected to violence, is a deeper 
question. But in that case, and with that concurrence, I should 
have much doubt whether any rash or desperate changes in the 
State, such as we have seen in France, could ever be effected. 
. I have said, that in all political questions the consequences 
of any assumed rights are of great moment in deciding upon 
their validity. In this point of view let us a little scrutinize 
the effects of a right in the mere majority of the inhabitants of 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 239 

any country of superseding and altering their government at 
pleasure. 

The sum total of every people is composed of its units. 
Every individual must have a right to originate what after- 
wards is to become the Act of the majority. Whatever he may 
lawfully originate he may lawfully endeavour to accomplish. 
He has a right therefore in his own particular to break the ties 
and engagements which bind him to the country in which he 
lives ; and he has a right to make as many converts to his opin- 
ions, and to obtain as many associates in his designs, as he can 
procure : for how can you know the dispositions of the majority 
to destroy their government, but by tampering with some part 
of the body ? You must begin by a secret conspiracy, that you 
may end with a national confederation. The mere pleasure of 
the beginner must be the sole guide ; since the mere pleasure 
of others must be the sole ultimate sanction, as well as the 
sole actuating principle, in every part of the progress. Thus, 
arbitrary will, (the last corruption of ruling power,) step by 
step, poisons the heart of every citizen. If the undertaker 
fails, he has the misfortune of a rebel, but not the guilt. By 
such doctrines, all love to our country, all pious veneration and 
attachment to its laws and customs, are obliterated from our 
minds ; and nothing can result from this opinion, when grown 
into a principle, and animated by discontent, ambition, or 
enthusiasm, but a series of conspiracies and seditions, some- 
times ruinous to their authors, always noxious to the State. 
!No sense of duty can prevent any man from being a leader or a 
follower in such enterprises. Nothing restrains the tempter ; 
nothing guards the tempted. ISTor is the new State, fabricated 
by such arts, safer than the old. What can prevent the mere 
will of any person, who hopes to unite the wills of other to his 
own, from an attempt wholly to overturn it? It wants nothing 
but a disposition to trouble the established order, to give a title 
to the enterprise. 

When you combine this principle, of the right to change a 
fixed and tolerable constitution of things at pleasure, with the 
theory and practice of the French Assembly, the political, civil, 
and moral irregularity are, if possible, aggravated. The Assem- 
bly have found another road, and a far more commodious, to 
the destruction of an old government, and the legitimate forma- 
tion of a new one, than through the previous will of the majority 
of what they call the people. Get, say they, the possession of 
power by any means you can into your hands ; and then a sub- 
sequent consent (what they call an address of adhesion) makes 
your authority as much the Act of the people as if they had 
conferred upon you originally that kind and degree of power 



240 BUTtKE. 

which, without their permission, you had seized upon. This is 
to give a direct sanction to fraud, hypocrisy, perjury, and the 
breach of the most sacred trusts that can exist between man 
and man. What can sound with such horrid discordance in the 
moral ear as this position,— That a delegate with limited powers 
may break his sworn engagements to his constituents, assume 
an authority, never committed to him, to alter all things at his 
pleasure ; and then, if he can persuade a large number of men 
to flatter him in the power he has usurped, that he is absolved 
in his own conscience, and ought to stand acquitted in the eyes 
of mankind? On this scheme, the maker of the experiment 
must begin with a determined perjury. That point is certain. 
He must take his chance for the expiatory addresses. This is 
to make the success of villainy the standard of innocence. 

Without drawing on, therefore, very shocking consequences, 
neither by previous consent nor by subsequent ratification of a 
mere reckoned majority, can any set of men attempt to dissolve 
the State at their pleasure. To apply this to our present sub- 
ject. When the several orders, in their several bailliages, had 
met in the year 1789, (such of them, I mean, as had met peaceably 
and constitutionally,) to choose and to instruct their representa- 
tives ; so organized and so acting, (because they were organized 
and were acting according to the conventions which made them 
a people,) they were the people of France. They had a legal 
and a natural capacity to be considered as that people. But, 
observe, whilst they were in this state, that is, whilst they were 
a people, in no one of their instructions did they charge or even 
hint at any one of those things which have drawn upon the 
usurping Assembly, and their adherents, the detestation of the 
rational and thinking part of mankind. I will venture to affirm, 
without the least apprehension of being contradicted by any 
person who knows the then state of France, that, if any one of 
the changes had been proposed which form the fundamental 
parts of their Revolution, and compose its most distinguishing 
acts, it would not have had one vote in twenty thousand in any 
order. Their instructions purported the direct contrary to all 
those famous proceedings which are defended as the Acts of the 
people. Had such proceedings been expected, the great proba- 
bility is, that the people would then have risen, as to a man, to 
prevent them. The whole organization of the Assembly was 
altered, the whole frame of the kingdom was changed, before 
these things could be done.' It is long to tell, by what evil arts 
of the conspirators, and by what extreme weakness and want of 
steadiness in the lawful government, this equal usurpation on 
the rights of the prince and people, having first cheated, and 
then offered violence to both, has been able to triumph, and to 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 241 

employ with success the forged signature of an imprisoned sov- 
ereign, and the spurious voice of dictated addresses, to a subse- 
quent ratification of things that had never received any previous 
sanction, general or particular, expressed or implied, from the 
nation, (in whatever sense that word is taken,) or from any part 
of it. 

After the weighty and respectable part of the people had 
been murdered, or driven by the menaces of murder from their 
houses, or were dispersed in exile into every country in Europe; 
after the soldiery had been debauched from their officers ; after 
property had lost its weight and consideration, along with its 
security ; after voluntary clubs and associations of factious and 
unprincipled men were substituted in the place of all the legal 
corporations of the kingdom arbitrarily dissolved ; after free- 
dom had been banished from those popular meetings 9 whose 
sole recommendation is freedom ; after it had come to that pass 
that no dissent could appear in any of them, but at the certain 
price of life ; after even dissent had been anticipated, and 
assassination became as quick as suspicion ; — such pretended 
ratification by addresses could be no Act of what any lover of 
the people would choose to call by their name. It is that voice 
which every successful usurpation, as well as this before us, 
may easily procure, even without making (as these tyrants have 
made) donatives from the spoil of one part of the citizens to 
corrupt the other. 

The pretended rights of man, which have made this havoc, 
cannot be the rights of the people. For, to be a people, and to 
have these rights, are things incompatible. The one supposes 
the presence, the other the absence, of a state of civil society. 
The very foundation of the French commonwealth is false and 
self-destructive ; nor can its principles be adopted in any coun- 
try, without the certainty of bringing it to the very same condi- 
tion in which France is found. Attempts are made to introduce 
them into every nation in Europe. This nation, as possessing 
the greatest influence, they wish most to corrupt, as by that 
means they are assured the contagion must become general. I 
hope, therefore, I shall be excused, if I endeavour to show, as 
shortly as the matter will admit, the danger of giving to them, 
either avowedly or tacitly, the smallest countenance. 

There are times and circumstances in which not to speak out 
is at least to connive. Many think it enough for them, that the 
principles propagated by these clubs and societies, enemies to 
their country and its Constitution, are not owned by the modern 
IVJdgs in Parliament, who are so warm in condemnation of Mr. 

9 The "popular meetings" here referred to were the primary assemblies. 



242 BURKE. 

Burke and his book, and of course of all the principles of the 
ancient, constitutional Whigs of this kingdom. Certainly they 
are not owned. But are they condemned with the same zeal as 
Mr. Burke and his book are condemned ? Are they condemned 
at all ? Are they rejected or discountenanced in any way what- 
soever? Is any man who would fairly examine into the de- 
meanour and principles of those societies, and that too very 
moderately, and in the way rather of admonition than of pun- 
ishment, is such a man even decently treated? Is he not 
reproached, as if, in condemning such principles, he had belied 
the conduct of his whole life, suggesting that his life had been 
governed by principles similar to those which he now repro- 
bates ? The French system is in the mean time, by many active 
agents out of doors, rapturously praised ; the British Constitu- 
tion is coldly tolerated. But these Constitutions are different, 
both in the foundation and in the whole superstructure ; and it 
is plain that you cannot build up the one but on the ruins of 
the other. After all, if the French be a superior system of lib- 
erty, why should we not adopt it? To what end are our praises? 
Is excellence held out to us only that we should not copy after 
it ? And what is there in the manners of the people, or in the 
climate of France, which renders that species of republic fitted 
for them, and unsuitable to us ? A strong and marked differ- 
ence between the two nations ought to be shown, before we can 
admit a constant, affected panegyric, a standing annual com- 
memoration, to be without any tendency to an example. 

But the leaders of party will not go the length of the doc- 
trines taught by the seditious clubs ? I am sure they do not 
mean to do so. God forbid ! Perhaps even those who are di- 
rectly carrying on the work of this pernicious foreign faction 
do not all of them intend to produce all the mischiefs which 
must inevitably follow from their having any success in their 
proceedings. As to leaders in parties, nothing is more common 
than to see them blindly led. The world is governed by go- 
betweens. These go-betweens influence the persons with 
whom they carry on the intercourse, by stating their own sense 
to each of them as the sense of the other ; and thus they recip- 
rocally master both sides. It is first buzzed about the ears of 
leaders, that "their friends without-doors are very eager for 
some measure, or very warm about some opinion,— that you 
must not be too rigid with them. They are useful persons, and 
zealous in the cause. They may be a little wrong ; but the 
spirit of liberty must not be damped ; and, by the influence you 
obtain from some degree of concurrence with them at present, 
you may be enabled to set them right hereafter." 

Thus the leaders are at first drawn to a connivance with sehti- 



THE OLD AND THE NEW WHIGS. 



243 



inents and proceedings often totally different from their seri- 
ous and deliberate notions. But their acquiescence answers 
every purpose. 

With no better than such powers, the go-betweens assume a 
new representative character. What at best was but an acqui- 
escence, is magnified into an authority, and thence into a desire 
on the part of the leaders ; and it is carried down as such to the 
subordinate members of parties. By this artifice they in their 
turn are led into measures which at first, perhaps, few of 
them wished at all, or at least did not desire vehemently or 
systematically. 

There is in all parties, between the principal leaders in Par- 
liament and the lowest followers out of doors, a middle sort of 
men, a sort of equestrian order, who, by the spirit of that mid- 
dle situation, are the fittest for preventing things from running 
to excess. But indecision, though a vice of a totally different 
character, is the natural accomplice of violence. The irresolu- 
tion and timidity of those who compose this middle order often 
prevent the effect of their controlling situation. The fear of 
differing with the authority of leaders on the one hand, and of 
contradicting the desires of the multitude on the other, induces 
them to give a careless and passive assent to measures in which 
they never were consulted: and thus things proceed, by a sort 
of activity of inertness, until whole bodies, leaders, middle men, 
and followers, are all hurried, with every appearance, and with 
many of the effects, of unanimity, into schemes of politics, in 
the substance of which no two of them were ever fully agreed, 
and the origin and authors of which, in this circular mode of 
communication, none of them find it possible to trace. In my 
experience I have seen much of this in affairs which, though 
trifling in comparison to the present, were yet of some impor- 
tance to parties ; and I have known them suffer by it. The 
sober part give their sanction, at first through inattention and 
levity ; at last they give it through necessity. A violent spirit 
is raised, which the presiding minds, after a time, find it imprac- 
ticable to stop at their pleasure, to control, to regulate, or even 
to direct. 

This shows, in my opinion, how very quick and awakened all 
men ought to be, who are looked up to by the public, and who 
deserve that confidence, to prevent a surprise on their opinions, 
when dogmas are spread, and projects pursued, by which the 
foundations of society may be affected. Before they listen 
even to moderate alterations in the government of their coun- 
try, they ought to take care that principles are not propagated 
for that purpose, which are too big for their object. Doctrines 
limited in their present application, and wide in their general 



244 BURKE. 

principles, are never meant to be confined to what they at first 
pretend. If I were to form a prognostic of the effect of the 
present machinations on the people from their sense of any 
grievance they suffer under this Constitution, my mind would 
be at ease. But there is a wide difference between the multi- 
tude, when they act against their government from a sense of 
grievance, or from zeal for some opinions. When men are 
thoroughly possessed with that zeal, it is difficult to calculate 
its force. It is certain that its power is by no means in exact 
proportion to its reasonableness. It must always have been 
discoverable by persons of reflection, but it is now obvious to 
the world, that a theory concerning government may become as 
much a cause of fanaticism as a dogma in religion. There is a 
boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling ; none 
when they are under the influence of imagination. Remove a 
grievance, and, when men act from feeling, you go a great way 
towards quieting a commotion. But the good or bad conduct 
of a government, the protection men have enjoyed, or the op- 
pression they have suffered, under it, are of no sort of moment, 
when a faction, proceeding upon speculative grounds, is thor- 
oughly heated against its form. When a man is, from system, 
furious against monarchy or episcopacy, the good conduct of 
the monarch or the bishop has no other effect than further to 
irritate the adversary. He is provoked at it as furnishing a plea 
for preserving the thing which he wishes to destroy. His mind 
will be heated as much by the sight of a sceptre, a mace, or a 
verge, as if he had been daily bruised and wounded by these 
symbols of authority. Mere spectacles, mere names, will be- 
come sufficient causes to stimulate the people to war and 
tumult. 

Some gentlemen are not terrified by the facility with which 
government has been overturned in France. The people of 
France, they say, had nothing to lose in the destruction of a 
bad Constitution ; but, though not the best possible, we have 
still a good stake in ours, which will hinder us from desperate 
risks. Is this any security at all against those who seem to 
persuade themselves, and who labour to persuade others, that 
our Constitution is an usurpation in its origin, unwise in its 
contrivance, mischievous in its effects, contrary to the rights of 
man, and in all its parts a perfect nuisance ? What motive has 
any rational man, who thinks in that manner, to spill his blood, 
or even to risk a shilling of his fortune, or to waste a moment 
of his leisure, to preserve it ? If he has any duty relative to it, 
his duty is to destroy it. A Constitution on sufferance is a Con- 
stitution condemned. Sentence is already passed upon it. The 
execution is only delayed. On the principles of these gentlemen 






THE OLD AKD THE NEW WHIGS. 245 

it neither has nor ought to have any security. So far as regards 
them, it is left naked, without friends, partisans, assertors, or 
protectors. 

Let us examine into the value of this security upon the 
principles of those who are more sober ; of those who think, 
indeed, the French Constitution better, or at least as good, as 
the British, without going to all the lengths of the warmer 
politicians in reprobating their own. Their security amounts 
in reality to nothing more than this, — that the difference be- 
tween their republican system and the British limited mon- 
archy is not worth a civil war. This opinion, I admit, will 
prevent people, not very enterprising in their nature, from an 
active undertaking against the British Constitution. But it is 
the poorest defensive principle that ever was infused into the 
mind of man against the attempts of those who will enterprise.' 
It will tend totally to remove from their minds that very terror 
of a civil war which is held out as our sole security. They who 
think so well of the French Constitution certainly will not be 
the persons to carry on a war to prevent their obtaining a 
great benefit, or at worst a fair exchange. They will not go to 
battle in favour of a cause in which their defeat might be more 
advantageous to the public than their victory. They must at 
least tacitly abet those who endeavour to make converts to a 
sound opinion; they must discountenance those who would 
oppose its propagation. In proportion as by these means the 
enterprising party is strengthened, the dread of a struggle is 
lessened. See what an encouragement this is to the enemies 
of the Constitution ! A few assassinations, and a very great 
destruction of property, we know they consider as no real 
obstacles in the way of a grand political change. And they will 
hope that here, if anti-monarchical opinions gain ground, as 
they have done in France, they may, as in France, accomplish 
a revolution without a war. 

They who think so well of the French Constitution cannot be 
seriously alarmed by any progress made by its partisans. Pro- 
visions for security are not to be received from those who 
think that there is no danger. ISTo ! there is no plan of security 
to be listened to but from those who entertain the same fears 
with ourselves ; from those who think that the thing to be 
secured is a great blessing ; and the thing against which we 
would secure it a great mischief. Every person of a different 
opinion must be careless about security. 

I believe the author of the Reflections, whether he fears the 
designs of that set of people with reason or not, cannot prevail 
on himself to despise them. He cannot despise them for their 
numbers, which, though small compared with the sound part 



24G BURKE. 

of the community, are not inconsiderable ; he cannot look with 
contempt on their influence, their activity, or the kind of tal- 
ents and tempers which they possess, exactly calculated for the 
work they have in hand, and the minds they chiefly apply to. 
Do we not see their most considerable and accredited ministers, 
and several of their party of weight and importance, active in 
spreading mischievous opinions, in giving sanction to seditious 
writings, in promoting seditious anniversaries ? And what part 
of their description has disowned them or their proceedings? 
When men, circumstanced as these are, publicly declare such 
admiration of a foreign Constitution, and such contempt of our 
own, it would be, in the author of the Reflections, thinking as he 
does of the French Constitution, infamously to cheat the rest 
of the nation to their ruin, to say there is no danger. 
* In estimating danger, we are obliged to take into our calcula- 
tion the character and disposition of the enemy into whose 
hands we may chance to fall. The genius of this faction is 
easily discerned, by observing with what a very different eye 
they have viewed the late foreign revolutions. Two have 
passed before them ; —that of France and that of Poland. The 
state of Poland was such, that there could scarcely exist two 
opinions, but that a reformation of its Constitution, even at 
some expense of blood, might be seen without much disappro- 
bation. No confusion could be feared in such an enterprise, 
because the establishment to be reformed was itself a state of 
confusion. A king without authority ; nobles without union or 
subordination ; a people without arts, industry, commerce, or 
liberty ; no order within, no defence without ; no effective pub- 
lic force, but a foreign force, which entered a naked country at 
will, and disposed of every thing at pleasure. Here was a state 
of things which seemed to invite, and might perhaps justify, 
bold enterprise and desperate experiment. But in what man- 
ner was this chaos brought into order? The means were as 
striking to the imagination as satisfactory to the reason and 
soothing to the moral sentiments. In contemplating that 
change, humanity has every thing to rejoice and to glory in ; 
nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to suffer. So far as it has 
gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated public good 
which ever has been conferred on mankind. We have seen 
anarchy and servitude at once removed ; a throne strengthened 
for the protection of the people, without trenching on their lib- 
erties ; all foreign cabal banished, by changing the Crown from 
elective to hereditary ; and, what was a matter of pleasing won- 
der, we have seen a reigning king, from an heroic love to his 
country, exerting himself with all the toil, the dexterity, the 
management, the intrigue, in favour of a family of strangers, 



THE OLD AtfD THE NEW WHIGS. 247 

with which ambitious men labour for the aggrandizement of 
their own. Ten millions of men in a way of being freed gradu- 
ally, and therefore safely to themselves and the State, not from 
civil or political chains, which, bad as they are, only fetter the 
mind, but from substantial personal bondage. Inhabitants of 
cities, before without privileges, placed in the consideration 
which belongs to that improved and connecting situation of 
social life. One of the most proud, numerous, and fierce bodies 
of nobility and gentry ever known in the world, arranged only 
in the foremost rank of free and generous citizens. Not one 
man incurred loss, or suffered degradation. All, from the King 
to the day-labourer, were improved in their condition. Every 
thing was kept in its place and order ; but in that place and 
order every thing was bettered. To add to this happy wonder, 
(this unheard-of conjunction of wisdom and fortune,) not one 
drop of blood was spilt ; no treachery ; no outrage ; no system 
of slander more cruel than the sword ; no studied insults on re- 
ligion, morals, or manners ; no spoil ; no confiscation ; no citi- 
zen beggared; none imprisoned; none exiled: the whole was 
effected with a policy, a discretion, an unanimity and secresy, 
such as have never been before known on any occasion. But 
such wonderful conduct was reserved for this glorious conspir- 
acy in favour of the true and genuine rights and interests of 
men. Happy people, if they know how to proceed as they have 
begun! Happy prince, worthy to begin with splendour, or to 
close with glory, a race of patriots and kings ; and to leave 

" A-name, which every wind to Heaven would bear, 
Which men to speak, and angels joy to hear." 

To finish all,— this great good, as in the instant it is, Contains 
in it the seeds of all further improvement ; and may be consid- 
ered as in a regular progress, because founded on similar prin- 
ciples, towards the stable excellency of a British Constitution. 1 
Here was a matter for congratulation and for festive remem- 
brance through ages. Here moralists and divines might indeed 
relax in their temperance, to exhilarate their humanity. But 
mark the character of our faction. All their enthusiasm is kept 
for the French Revolution. They cannot pretend that France 
had stood so much in need of a change as Poland. They cannot 
pretend that Poland has not obtained a better system of liberty, 

1 This splendid description seems too good to be true ; true it is, however, 
and later history sustains it. But, alas! the Constitution which promised so 
much was, partly because of that very promise, defeated by that great crime, for 
Avhich the authors afterwards suffered such terrible retributions, " the partition 
of Poland." 



248 BURKE. 

or of government, than it enjoyed before. They cannot assert 
that the Polish devolution cost more dearly than that of France 
to the interests and feelings of multitudes of men. But the 
cold and subordinate light in which they look upon the one, 
and the pains they take to preach up the other, of these Kevolu- 
tions, leave us no choice in fixing on their motives. Both Inv- 
olutions profess liberty as their object ; but in obtaining this 
object the one proceeds from anarchy to order ; the other, from 
order to anarchy. The first secures its liberty by establishing 
its throne ; the other builds its freedom on the subversion of its 
monarchy. In the one their means are unstained by crimes, 
and their settlement favours morality. In the other vice and 
confusion are in the very essence of their pursuit and of their 
enjoyment. The circumstances in which these two events differ 
must cause the difference we make in their comparative estima- 
tion. These turn the scale with the Societies in favour of 
France. Ferrum est quod amant. 2 The frauds, the violences, 
the sacrileges, the havoc and ruin of families, the dispersion 
and exile of the pride and flower of a great country, the dis- 
order, the confusion, the anarchy, the violation of property, the 
cruel murders, the inhuman confiscations, and in the end the 
insolent domination of bloody, ferocious, and senseless clubs, — 
these are the things which they love and admire. What men 
admire and love, they would surely act. Let us see what is 
done in France ; and then let us undervalue any the slightest 
danger of falling into the hands of such a merciless and savage 
faction ! 3 



A LETTEE TO A KOBLE LOKD.* 

My Lord : I could hardly flatter myself with the hope, that 
so very early in the season I should have to acknowledge obli- 

2 The sword is what they love; or, perhaps, the guillotine. 

3 The Appeal did not command so large a circulation as the Reflections, hut it 
thoroughly rounded off the whole question; and its popularity was so great 
withal, as to throw into the shade every other publication of the time. The 
King, it is said, was even more pleased with it than with the Reflections: on 
reading it, his inveterate prejudices against the author were fairly overcome; 
and when Burke, according to the rules of official etiquette, appeared at his 
levee, the King welcomed him with his most gracious smile, and conversed 
with him a long time, while many titled bystanders looked in vain for a royal 
recognition. 

4 The full title of this piece, as originally published, is, "A Letter from the 
Right. Hon. Edmund Burke, to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks made upon him and 
his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lau. 






A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 249 

gations to the Duke of Bedford and to the Earl of Lauder- 
dale. These noble persons have lost no time in conferring 
upon me that sort of honour which it is alone within their com- 
petence, and which it is certainly most congenial to their nature 
and to their manners, to bestow. 

To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they speak, by the 
zealots of the new sect in philosophy and politics, of which 
these noble persons think so charitably, and of which others 
think so justly, to me is no matter of uneasiness or surprise. 
To have incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Orleans or the 
Duke of Bedford, to fall under the censure of citizen Brissot or 
of his friend the Earl of Lauderdale, I ought to consider as 
proofs, not the least satisfactory, that I have produced some 
part of the effect I proposed by my endeavours. I have la- 
boured hard to earn what the noble lords are generous enough 
to pay. Personal offence I have given them none. The part 
they take against me is from zeal to the cause. It is well ! It 
is perfectly well ! I have to do homage to their justice. I have 
to thank the Bedfords and the Lauderdales for having so faith- 
fully and so fully acquitted towards me whatever arrear of debt 
was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the Paines. 

Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own wrong: 
I at least have nothing to complain of. They have gone beyond 
the demands of justice. They have been (a little perhaps be- 
yond their intention) favourable to me. They have been the 
means of bringing out, by their invectives, the handsome things 
which Lord Grenville has had the goodness and condescension 
to say in my behalf. Retired as I am from the world, and from 
all its affairs and all its pleasures, I confess it does kindle, in 
my nearly extinguished feelings, a very vivid satisfaction to be 
so attacked and so commended. It is soothing to my wounded 
mind to be commended by an able, vigorous, and well-informed 
statesman, and at the very moment when he stands forth with 
a manliness and resolution, worthy of himself and of his cause, 
for the preservation of the person and government of our sov- 
ereign, and therein for the security of the laws, the liberties, the 
morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any fair way con- 
nected with such things is indeed a distinction. No philosophy 
can make me above it : no melancholy can depress me so low, 
as to make me wholly insensible to such an honour. 

derdale, early in the present Session of Parliament. 179f>." — With a majority 
of Buvke's readers this is probably the favourite of his works, and the one 
Which they read oitenest. The distinguished lawyer and orator, Rufus Choate, 
a man of exquisite taste, and who had his mind stored with the choicest learn- 
ings, ancient and modern, once said to me, " I have to read Burke's Letter to a 
Noble Lord once a-quarter; I get sick, if I don't." 



250 BURKE. 

Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and inaction ? 
Are they apprehensive that, if an atom of me remains, the sect 
has something to fear? Must I be annihilated, lest, like old 
John Zisca's, 5 my skin might be made into a drum, to animate 
Europe to eternal battle against a tyranny that threatens to 
overwhelm all Europe, and all the human race ? 

My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Before this of 
France, the annals of all time have not furnished an instance of 
a complete revolution. That Eevolution seems to have extended 
even to the constitution of the mind of man. It has this of 
wonderful in it, that it resembles what Lord Verulam says of 
the operations of Nature. It was perfect, not only in its ele- 
ments and principles, but in all its members and its organs from 
the very beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes the 
only pattern ever known, which they who admire will instantly 
resemble. It is indeed an inexhaustible repertory of one kind 
of examples. In my wretched condition, though hardly to be 
classed with the living, I am not safe from them. They have 
tigers to fall upon animated strength. They have hyenas to 
prey upon carcasses. The national menagerie is collected by 
the first physiologists of the time ; and it is defective in no 
description of savage nature. They pursue even such as me 
into the obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolu- 
tionary tribunals. Neither sex, nor age, nor the sanctuary of 
the tomb, is sacred to them. They have so determined a 
hatred to all privileged orders, that they deny even to the 
departed the sad immunities of the grave. They are not 
wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to their 
malice ; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate 
the living. If all revolutionists were not proof against all cau- 
tion, I should recommend it to their consideration, that no 
persons were ever known in history, either sacred or profane, 
to vex the sepulchre, and, by their sorceries, to call up the 
prophetic dead, with any other event than the prediction of 
their own disastrous fate, — "Leave me, O, leave me to repose ! " 

In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack 
upon me and my mortuary pension. He cannot readily com- 
prehend the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained 
was the fruit of no bargain ; the production of no intrigue ; the 

5 The reformers, known in Church history as the Hussites, were divided into 
two parties, called the Calixtines and the Taborites. The latter was the more 
vigorous, or the radical, party, and had John Zisca for its leader. He died in 
1424, and his followers Avere so cast down at his death, that they called them- 
selves Orphans. He was for waging a war of extermination against the Catho- 
lics; and this fanatical zeal caused him to wish that his skin might be made into 
a drum-head, to animate the battles of oi thodoxy. 






A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 251 

result of no compromise ; the effect of no solicitation. The 
first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately or immedi- 
ately, to his Majesty or any of his Ministers. It was long 
known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and 
before the heaviest of all calamities had for ever condemned 
me to obscurity and sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. 
I had executed that design. I was entirely out of the way of 
serving or of hurting any statesman, or any party, when the 
Ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the 
spontaneous bounty of the Crown. Both descriptions have 
acted as became them. When I could no longer serve them, 
the Ministers have considered my situation. When I could no 
longer hurt them, the revolutionists have trampled on my 
infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner in. 
which the benefit was conferred. It came to me indeed at a 
time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no cir- 
cumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But 
this was no fault in the royal donor, or in his Ministers, who 
were pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant 
of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man. 

It would ill become me to boast of any thing. It would as ill 
become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long 
life, spent with unexampled toil in the service of my country. 
Since the total body of my services, on account of the industry 
which was shown in them, and the fairness of my intentions, 
have obtained the acceptance of my sovereign, it would be ab- 
surd in me to range myself on the side of the Duke of Bedford 
and the Corresponding Society, or, as far as in me lies, to per- 
mit a dispute on the rate at which the authority appointed by 
our Constitution to estimate such things has been pleased to set 
them. 

Loose libels ought to be passed by in silence and contempt. 
By me they have been so always. I knew that, as long as I re- 
mained in public, I should live down the calumnies of malice 
and the judgments of ignorance. If I happened to be now and 
then in the wrong, (as who is not ?) like all other men, I must 
bear the consequence of my faults and my mistakes. The libels 
of the present day are just of the same stuff as the libels of the 
past. But they derive an importance from the rank of the per- 
sons they come from, and the gravity of the place where they 
were uttered. In some way or other I ought to take some 
notice of them. To assert myself thus traduced is not vanity or 
arrogance. It is a demand of justice ; it is a demonstration of 
gratitude. If I am unworthy, the Ministers are worse than 
prodigal. On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the Duke 
of Bedford. 



252 BUKKE. 

For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I put myself 
on my country. I ought to be allowed a reasonable freedom, 
because I stand upon my deliverance ; and no culprit ought to 
plead in irons. Even in the utmost latitude of defensive lib- 
erty, I wish to preserve all possible decorum. Whatever it may 
be in the eyes of these noble persons themselves, to me their 
situation calls for the most profound respect. If I should hap- 
pen to trespass a little, which I trust I shall not, let it always be 
supposed, that a confusion of characters may produce mistakes ; 
that, in the masquerades of the grand carnival of our age, 
whimsical adventures happen ; odd things are said and ixiss off. 
If I should fail a single point in the high respect I owe to those 
illustrious persons, I cannot be supposed to mean the Duke of 
Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of the House of Peers, but 
the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of Palace- 
Yard ! — the Dukes and Earls of Brentford. There they are 
on the pavement ; there they seem to come nearer to my hum- 
ble level ; and, virtually at least, to have waived their high 
privilege. 

Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tribunals, 
where men have been put to death for no other reason than 
that they had obtained favours from the Crown. I claim, not 
the letter, but the spirit, of the old English law, that is, to be 
tried by my peers. I decline his Grace's jurisdiction as a judge. 
I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a juror to pass upon the 
value of my services. Whatever his natural parts may be, I 
cannot recognize, in his few and idle years, the competence to 
judge of my long and laborious life. If I can help it, he shall 
not be on the inquest of my quantum meruit. Poor rich man 1 
He can hardly know any thing of public industry in its exer- 
tions, or can estimate its compensations when its work is done. 
I have no doubt of his Grace's readiness in all the calculations 
of vulgar arithmetic : but I shrewdly suspect that he is little 
studied in the theory of moral proportions ; and has never 
learned the rule-of-three in the arithmetic of policy and State. 

His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. I answer, that 
my exertions, whatever they have been, were such as no hopes 
of pecuniary reward could possibly excite ; and no pecuniary 
compensation can possibly reward them. Between money and 
such services, if done by abler men than I am, there is no com- 
mon principle of comparison ; they are quantities incommens- 
urable. Money is made for the comfort and convenience of 
animal life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life 
must indeed sustain, but never can inspire. With submission 
to his Grace, I have not had more than sufficient. As to any 
noble use, I trust I know how to employ, as well as he, a much 



A LETTEE TO A NOBLE LOED. 253 

greater fortune than he possesses. In a more confined applica- 
tion, I certainly stand in need of every kind of relief and ease- 
ment much more than he does. When I say I have not 
received more than I deserve, is this the language I hold to 
Majesty? No ! Far, very far from it I Before that presence, 
I claim no merit at all. Every thing towards me is favour and 
bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor; another to a 
proud and insulting foe. 

His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt, by charging my 
acceptance of his Majesty's grant as a departure from my ideas, 
and the spirit of my conduct with regard to economy. If it be, 
my ideas of economy were false and ill-founded. But they are 
the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I have contradicted, 
and not my own. If he means to allude to certain bills brought 
in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him that 
there is nothing in my conduct that can contradict either the 
letter or the spirit of those Acts. Does he mean the pay-office 
Act ? I take it for granted he does not. The Act to which he 
alludes is, I suppose, the establishment Act. I greatly doubt 
whether his Grace has ever read the one or the other. The 
first of these systems cost me, with every assistance which my 
then situation gave me, pains incredible. I found an opinion 
common through all the offices, and general in the public at 
large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize 
the office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however ; and 
I succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, 
or whether the general economy of our finances, has profited 
by that Act, I leave to those who are acquainted with the army, 
and with the treasury, to judge. 

An opinion full as general prevailed also at the same time, 
that nothing could be done for the regulation of the civil-list es- 
tablishment. The very attempt to introduce method into it, and 
any limitations to its services, was held absurd. I had not seen 
the man who so much as suggested one economical principle, or 
an economical expedient, upon that subject. Nothing but 
coarse amputation, or coarser taxation, were then talked of, 
both of them without design, combination, or the least shadow 
of principle. Blind and headlong zeal, or factious fury, were 
the whole contribution brought by the most noisy on that occa- 
sion towards the satisfaction of the public, or the relief of the 
Crown. 

Let me tell my youthful censor, that the necessities of that 
time required something very different from what others then 
suggested, or what his Grace now conceives. Let me inform 
him that it was one of the most critical periods in our annals. 

Astronomers have supposed that, if a certain comet, whose 



254 BURKE. 

path intercepted the ecliptic, had met the Earth in some (I for- 
get what) sign, it would have whirled us along with it, in its 
eccentric course, into God knows what regions of heat and cold. 
Had the portentous comet of the rights of man, (which "from 
its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," and "with fear of 
change perplexes monarchs,") had that comet crossed upon us 
in that internal state of England, nothing human could have 
prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the highway of 
heaven into all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miseries of the 
French Revolution. 

Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her hostility was 
at a good distance. We had a limb cut off ; but we preserved 
the body. We lost our colonies ; but we kept our Constitution. 
There was, indeed, much intestine heat ; there was a dreadful 
fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection quitted the woods, 
and prowled about our streets in the name of reform. Such 
was the distemper of the public mind, that there was no mad- 
man, in his maddest ideas and maddest projects, who might 
not count upon numbers to support his principles and execute 
his designs. 

Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called parliamen- 
tary reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and 
supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, 
and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter 
destruction of the Constitution of this kingdom. Had they 
taken place, not France, but England, would have had the hon- 
our of leading up the death-dance of democratic revolution. 
Other projects, exactly coincident in time with those, struck 
at the very existence of the kingdom under any constitution. 
There are who remember the blind fury of some, and the 
lamentable helplessness of others ; here, a torpid confusion, 
from a panic fear of the danger ; there, the same inaction from 
a stupid insensibility to it ; here, well-wishers to the mischief ; 
there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time a sort of na- 
tional convention, dubious in its nature, and perilous in its ex- 
ample, nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority ; sat 
with a sort of superintendence over it ; and little less than dic- 
tated to it, not only laws, but the very form and essence of leg- 
islature itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric 
coarse. Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a man- 
ner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone. I do not mean 
to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He was a man of ad- 
mirable parts ; of general knowledge ; of a versatile under- 
standing fitted for every sort of business ; of infinite wit and 
pleasantry ; of a delightful temper ; and with a mind most per- 
fectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 255 

by a weak adulation, and not to honour the memory of a great 
man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and 
spirit of command that the time required. Indeed, a darkness, 
next to the fog of this awful day, loured over the whole region. 
For a little time the helm appeared abandoned: 

Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere ccelo, 
Nee meminisse viae media Palinurus in unda.s 

At that time I was connected with men of high place in the 
community. They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bed- 
ford can do ; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps 
their politics, as usual, took a tincture from their character, and 
they cultivated what they loved. The liberty they pursued was 
a liberty inseparable from order, from virtue, from morals, and 
from religion ; and was neither hypocritically nor fanatically 
followed. They did not wish that liberty, in itself one of the 
first of blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest 
curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the Consti- 
tution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its 
formation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them 
the first object. Popularity and power they regarded alike. 
These were with them only different means of obtaining that 
object, and had no preference over each other in their minds, 
but as one or the other might afford a surer or a less certain 
prospect of arriving at that end. It is some consolation to me 
in the cheerless gloom which darkens the evening of my life, 
that with them I commenced my political career, and never for 
a moment, in reality, nor in appearance, for any length of time, 
was separated from their good wishes and good opinion. 

By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, but 
just then, and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy which ever 
has pursued me with a full cry through life, I had obtained a 
very considerable degree of public confidence. I know well 
enough how equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms 
of the merit that obtained it. I am no stranger to the insecurity 
of its tenure. I do not boast of it. It is mentioned to show, not 
how highly I prize the thing, but my right to value the use I 
made of it. I endeavoured to turn that short-lived advantage 
to myself into a permanent benefit to my country. Par am I 
from detracting from the merit of some gentlemen, out of office 
or in it, on that occasion. No! — It is not my way to refuse a 
full and heaped measure of justice to the aids that I receive. I 

6 "Palinurus himself declared he could not distinguish between day and 
night in the sky, nor remember his course through the deep." Palinurus is the 
veteran and skilful pilot whom iEneas has at the helm of his ship, in Virgil. 



256 BURKE. 

have, through life, been willing to give every thing to others ; 
and to reserve nothing for myself but the inward conscience, 
that I had omitted no pains to discover, to animate, to discipline, 
to direct the abilities of the country for its service, and to place 
them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn it. This 
conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man ; never 
checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, or by 
any policy. I was always ready, to the height of my means, 
(and they were always infinitely below my desires,) to forward 
those abilities which overpowered my own. lie is an ill- 
furnished undertaker, who has no machinery but his own 
hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I ever thought 
myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and danger, 
more especially, I consulted, and sincerely cooperated with, 
men of all parties who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to 
any main part of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omit- 
ted: when it appeared, nothing to subdue it was left uncoun- 
selled, nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the time I 
speak of, and having a momentary lead, so aided and so encour- 
aged, and as a feeble instrument in a mighty hand, — I do not 
say I saved my country ; I am sure I did my country important 
service. There were few indeed that did not at that time ac- 
knowledge it, and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but 
one voice, that no man in the kingdom better deserved an hon- 
ourable provision should be made for him. 

So much for my general conduct through the whole of the 
portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the general sense then 
entertained of that conduct by my country. But my character, 
as a reformer, in the particular instances which the Duke of 
Bedford refers to, is so connected in principle with my opinions 
on the hideous changes which have since barbarized France, 
and, spreading thence, threaten the political and moral order of 
the whole world, that it seems to demand something of a more 
detailed discussion. 

My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may think, 
the suppression of a paltry pension or employment, more or 
less. Economy in my plans was, as it ought to be, secondary, 
subordinate, instrumental. I acted on State principles. I 
found a great distemper in the commonwealth ; and, according 
to the nature of the evil and of the object, I treated it. The 
malady was deep ; it was complicated, in the causes and in the 
symptoms. Throughout it was full of contra-indicants. On 
one hand government, daily growing more invidious from an 
apparent increase of the means of strength, was every day 
growing more contemptible by real weakness. • Nor was this 
dissolution confined to government commonly so called. It 



A LETTEE TO A 5s T OBLE LOED. 257 

extended to Parliament ; which was losing not a little in its 
dignity and estimation, by an opinion of its not acting on 
worthy motives. On the other hand, the desires of the people 
(partly natural and partly infused into them by art) appeared 
in so wild and inconsiderate a manner, with regard to the 
economical object, (for I set aside for a moment the dreadful 
tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,) that, if 
their petitions had literally been complied with, the State 
would have been convulsed ; and a gate would have been 
opened, through which all property might be sacked and rav- 
aged. Nothing could have saved the public from the mischiefs 
of the false reform but its absurdity ; which would soon have 
brought itself, and with it all real reform, into discredit. This 
would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people, 
who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of 
their wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, 
would impute the blame to any thing rather than to their 
own proceedings. But there were then persons in the world 
who nourished complaint, and would have been thoroughly 
disappointed if the people were ever satisfied. I was not of 
that humour. I wished that they should be satisfied. It was 
my aim to give to the people the substance of what I knew they 
desired, and what I thought was right, whether they desired it 
or not, before it had been modified for them into senseless 
petitions. I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, 
which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any 
design, will constantly be confounding, that is, a marked dis- 
tinction between change and reformation. The former alters 
the substance of the objects themselves ; and gets rid of all 
their essential good, as well as of all the accidental evil, an- 
nexed to them. Change is novelty ; and whether it is to op- 
erate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it 
may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation 
is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand. Eeform is, 
not a change in the substance, or in the primary modification, 
of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the 
grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. 
It stops there ; and, if it fails, the substance which underwent 
the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was. 

All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said 
elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated, — line 
upon line, precept upon precept, — until it comes into the cur- 
rency of a j>roverb, to innovate is not to reform. The French 
revolutionists complained of every thing ; they refused to 
reform any thing ; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all 
unchanged. The consequences are before us, — not in remote 



258 



BURKE. 



history; not in future prognostication: they are about us; 
they are upon us. They shake the public security ; they menace 
private enjoyment. They dwarf the growth of the young ; they 
break the quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way. 
They infest us in town ; they pursue us to the country. Our 
business is interrupted ; our repose is troubled ; our pleasures 
are saddened ; our very studies are poisoned and perverted, and 
knowledge is rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous 
evils of this dreadful innovation. The revolution harpies of 
Prance, sprung from night and Hell, or from that chaotic anar- 
chy which generates equivocally "all monstrous, all prodigious 
things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over 
and hatch them in the nest of every neighbouring State." These 
obscene harpies, who deck themselves in I know not what divine 
attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous birds of 
prey, (both mothers and daughters,) nutter over our heads, and 
souse down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, 
unravaged,*or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy offal. 8 

If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete inno- 
vation, or, as some friends of his will call it, reform, in the whole 
body of its solidity and compounded mass, at which, as Hamlet 
says, the face of heaven glows with horror and indignation, and 
which, in truth, makes every reflecting mind and every feeling 
heart perf ectly thought-sick, without a thorough abhorrence of 

7 Alluding to the naughty trick, which the cuckoo was said to have, of de- 
stroying the hedge-sparrow's eggs, and laying her own in the nest, for the spar- 
row to hatch; the honest bird then feeding the cuckoo chicks as her own, till 
scared away by their quenchless voracity. So in the First Part of King Henry 
the Fourth, v. 1 : 

" And, being fed by us, you used us so 
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo-bird, 
Useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest; 
Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk, 
That even our love durst not come near your sight, 
For fear of swallowing." 

8 Tristius haud illis monstrum, nee ssevior ulla 
Pcstis, ct ira Deum Stygiis sese extulit undis. 
Virginei volucrum vultus; faedissima vehtris 
Proluvies; uncseque manus ; et pallida semper 
Ora fame 



Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had not verse 
or language to describe that monster even as ho had conceived her. Had he 
lived in our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than, 
he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the horror of the times before 
him. Had he lived to see the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he 
would have had more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, 
and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them. — Author's Note. 



A LETTER TO A KOBLE LOED. 259 

every thing they say, and every thing they do, I am amazed at 
the morbid strength or the natural infirmity of his mind. 

It was, then, not my love, but my hatred, to innovation, that 
produced my plan of reform. "Without troubling myself with 
the exactness of the logical diagram, I considered them as 
things substantially opposite. It was to prevent that evil, that 
I proposed the measures, which his Grace is pleased, and I am 
not sorry he is pleased, to recall to my recollection. I had (what 
I hope that noble Duke will remember in all its operations) a 
State to preserve, as well as a State to reform. I had a people 
to gratify, but not to inflame, or to mislead. I do not claim half 
the credit for what I did, as for what I prevented from being 
done. In that situation of the public mind, I did not undertake, 
as was then proposed, to new-model the House of Commons or 
the House of Lords ; or to change the authority under which 
any officer of the Crown acted, who was suffered at all to exist. 
Crown, Lords, Commons, judicial system, system of administra- 
tion, existed as they had existed before ; and in the mode and 
manner in which they had always existed. My measures were,, 
what I then truly stated them to the House to be, in their in- 
tent, healing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too 
much influence in the House of Commons : I reduced it in both 
Houses ; and I gave my reasons article by article for every re- 
duction, and showed why I thought it safe for the service of the 
State. I heaved the lead every inch of way I made. A dispo- 
sition to expense was complained of: to that I. opposed, not 
mere retrenchment, but a system of economy, which would 
make a random expense, without plan or foresight, in future 
not easily practicable. I proceeded upon principles of research 
to put me in possession of my matter ; on principles of method 
to regulate it ; and on principles in the human mind and in civil 
affairs to secure and perpetuate the operation. I conceived 
nothing arbitrarily ; nor proposed any thing to be done by the 
will and pleasure of others, or my own ; but by reason, and by 
reason only. I have ever abhorred, since the first dawn of my 
understanding to this its obscure twilight, all the operations of 
opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of govern- 
ment, where only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of 
legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is 
made for the very purpose of opposing that reason to will and 
caprice, in the reformers or in the reformed, in the governors 
or in the governed, in kings, in senates, or in people. 

On a careful review, therefore, and analysis, of all the com- 
ponent parts of the civil list, and on weighing them against each 
other, in order to make, as much as possible, all of them a sub- 
ject of estimate, (the foundation and corner-stone of all regular 



260 



BURKE. 



provident economy,) it appeared to me evident that this was 
impracticable, whilst that part called the pension list was totally 
discretionary in its amount. For this reason, and for this only, 
I proposed to reduce it, both in its gross quantity and in its 
larger individual proportions, to a certainty ; lest, if it were 
left without a general limit, it might eat up the civil-list service; 
if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the fund, it 
might defeat its own end; and, by unlimited allowances to 
some, it might disable the Crown in means of providing for 
others. The pension list was to be kept as a sacred fund ; but 
it could not be kept as a constant, open fund, sufficient for 
growing demands, if some demands would wholly devour it. 
The tenour of the Act will show that it regarded the civil list 
only, the reduction of which to some sort of estimate was my 
great object. 

No other of the Crown funds did I meddle with, because they 
had not the same relations. This of the four and a half per 
cents does his Grace imagine had escaped me, or had escaped 
all the men of business who acted with me in those regulations ? 
I knew that such a fund existed, and that pensions had been 
always granted on it, before his Grace was born. This fund 
was full in my eye. It was full in the eyes of those who worked 
with me. It was left on principle. On principle I did what 
was then done ; and on principle what was left undone was 
omitted. I did not dare to rob the nation of all funds to reward 
merit. If I pressed this point too close, I acted contrary to the 
avowed principles on which I went. Gentlemen are very fond 
of quoting me ; but if any one thinks it worth his while to know 
the rules that guided me in my plan of reform, he will read my 
printed speech on that subject ; at least what is contained from 
page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection which 
a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publica- 
tions. 9 Be this as it may, these two bills (though achieved with 
the greatest labour, and management of every sort, both within 
and without the House) were only a part, and but a small part, 
of a very large system, comprehending all the objects I stated in 
opening my proposition, and indeed many more, which I just 
hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I was put 
out of that representation. All these, in some state or other of 
forwardness, I have long had by me. 

But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these grounds ? I think 
them the least of my services ! The time gave them an occa- 
sional value. What I have done in the way of political econo- 
my was far from confined to this body of measures. I did not 



9 See Speech on Economical Reform, pages 89-96, in this volume. 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE ' LORD. 261 

come into Parliament to con my lesson. I had earned my pen- 
sion before I set my foot in St. Stephen's chapel. I was pre- 
pared and disciplined to this political warfare. The first session 
I sat in Parliament, I found it necessary to analyze the whole 
commercial, financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of 
Great Britain and its empire. A great deal was then done ; 
and more, far more would have been done, if more had been 
permitted by events. Then, in the vigour of my manhood, my 
constitution sank under my labour. Had I then died, (and I 
seemed to myself very near death,) I had then earned, for those 
who belonged to me, more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas of 
service are of power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I 
am called to account for are not those on which I value myself 
the most. If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never 
done,) it should be for those in which for fourteen years, with- 
out intermission, I showed the most industry, and had the least 
success ; I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on 
which I value myself the most ; most for the importance ; most 
for the labour ; most for the judgment ; most for constancy and 
perseverance in the pursuit. Others may value them most for 
the intention. In that, surely, they are not mistaken. 

Does his Grace think that they who advised the Crown to 
make my retreat easy considered me only as an economist? 
That, well understood, however, is a good deal. If I had not 
deemed it of some value, I should not have made political econ- 
omy an object of my humble studies, from my very early youth 
to near the end of my service in Parliament, even before (at 
least to any knowledge of mine) it had employed the thoughts 
of speculative men in other parts of Europe. At that time it 
was still in its infancy in England, where, in the last century, it 
had its origin. Great and learned men thought my studies were 
not wholly thrown away, and deigned to communicate with me 
now and then on some particulars of their immortal works. 
Something of these studies may appear incidentally in some of 
the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to 
their effect, and has profited of them more or less for above 
eight and twenty years. 

To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not, like his 
Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a 
legislator : Nitor in adversum 1 is the motto for a man like me. 
I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the 
arts, that recommend men to the favour and protection of the 
great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I 
follow the trade of winning the hearts, by imposing on the un- 

1 I press forward against opposition. 



262 



BURKE. 



derstandings, of the people. At every step of my progress in 
life, (for in every step was I traversed and opposed,) and at 
every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and 
again and again to prove my sole title to the honour of being 
useful to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unac- 
quainted with its laws, and the whole system of its interests 
both abroad and at home. Otherwise no rank, no toleration 
even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have 
stood, and, please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the 
Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand. 

Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person 
whom he has not thought it below him to reproach, he might 
have found that, in the whole course of my life, I have never, 
on any pretence of economy, or on any other pretence, so much 
as in a single instance, stood between any man and his reward 
of service, or his encouragement in useful talent and pursuit, 
from the highest of those services and pursuits to the lowest. 
On the contrary, I have, on an hundred occasions, exerted my- 
self with singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable 
pretensions. I have more than once had good-natured repre- 
hensions from my friends for carrying the matter to something 
bordering on abuse. This line of conduct, whatever its merits 
might be, was partly owing to natural disposition ; but 1 think 
full as much to reason and principle. I looked on the consid- 
eration of public service, or public ornament, to be real and 
very justice: and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to 
partake of the nature of a wrong. I held it to be, in its conse- 
quences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money, I 
soon can count up all the good I do ; but when, by a cold pen- 
ury, I blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of its 
active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. 
Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has 
been general and systematic. I have never entered into those 
trifling vexations and oppressive details that have been falsely, 
and most ridiculously, laid to my charge. 

Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and Mr. Dun- 
ning between the proposition and execution of my plan ? No ! 
surely no ! Those pensions were within my principles. I as- 
sert it, those gentlemen deserved their pensions, their titles, — 
all they had ; and more had they had, I should have been but 
pleased the more. They were men of talents ; they were men 
of service. I put the profession of the law out of the question 
in one of them. It is a service that rewards itself. But their 
public service, though, from their abilities, unquestionably of 
more value than mine, in its quantity and its duration was not 
to be mentioned with it. But I uever could drive a hard bargain 



A LETTER TO A HOBLE LORD. 263 

in ray life, concerning any matter whatever ; and least of all do 
I know how to haggle and huckster with merit. Pension for 
myself I obtained none ; nor did I solicit any. Yet I was loaded 
with hatred for every thing that was withheld, and with 
obloquy for every thing that was given. I was thus left to 
support the grants of a name ever dear to me, 2 and ever ven- 
erable to the world, in favour of those who were no friends of 
mine or of his, against the rude attacks of those who were at 
that time friends to the grantees, and their own zealous parti- 
sans. I have never heard the Earl of Lauderdale complain of 
these pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to me. 
This is impartiality in the true, modern, revolutionary style. 

Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded order and 
economy, is stable and eternal ; as all principles must be. A 
particular order of things may be altered ; order itself cannot 
lose its value. As to other particulars, they are variable by 
time and by circumstances. Laws of regulation are not funda- 
mental laws. The public exigencies are the masters of all such 
laws. They rule the laws, and are not to be ruled by them. 
They who exercise the legislative power at the time must judge. 

It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell him that 
mere parsimony is not economy. It is separable in theory from 
it ; and in fact it may, or it may not, be a part of economy, 
according to circumstances. Expense, and great expense, may 
be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be 
considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is however 
another and a higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, 
and consists not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires 
no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no com- 
parison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of 
the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. 
The other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminat- 
ing judgment, and a firm, sagacious mind. It shuts one door to 
impudent importunity, only to open another, and a wider, to un- 
presuming merit. If none but meritorious service or real talent 
were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, and this na- 
tion will not want, the means of rewarding all the service it 
ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever will pro- 
duce. ?So State, since the foundation of society, has been im- 
poverished by that species of profusion. Had the economy of 
selection and proportion been at all times observed, we should 
not now have had an overgrown Duke of Bedford, to oppress 
the industry of humble men, and to limit, by the standard of 

2 The allusion is to the Marquess of Rockingham, who, like other Prime 
Ministers, granted some pensions. 



264 



BURKE. 



his own conceptions, the justice, the bounty, or, if he pleases, 
the charity of the Crown. 

His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my deserts 
in the far greater part of my conduct in life. It is free for him 
to do so. There will always be some difference of opinion in 
the value of political services. But there is one merit of mine 
which he, of all men living, ought to be the last to call in 
question. I have supported with very great zeal, and I am 
told with some degree of success, those opinions, or if his Grace 
likes another expression better, those old prejudices, which 
buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and titles. 
I have omitted no exertion to prevent him and them from 
sinking to that level to which the meretricious French faction, 
his Grace at least coquets with, omit no exertion to reduce 
both. I have done all I could to discountenance their inquiries 
into the fortunes of those who hold large portions of wealth 
without any apparent merit of their own. I have strained 
every nerve to keep the Duke of Bedford in that situation 
which alone makes him my superior. Your Lordship has been 
a witness of the use he makes of that preeminence. 

But be it, that this is virtue ! Be it, that there is virtue in 
this well-selected rigour ; yet all virtues are not equally be- 
coming to all men and at all times. There are crimes, un- 
doubtedly there are crimes, which in all seasons of our exist- 
ence ought to put a generous antipathy in action ; crimes that 
provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a warm and ani- 
mated pursuit. But all things that concern what I may call the 
preventive police of morality, all things merely rigid, harsh, 
and censorial, the antiquated moralists, at whose feet I was 
brought up, would not have thought these the fittest matter 
to form the favourite virtues of young men of rank. What 
might have been well enough, and have been received with 
a veneration mixed with awe and terror, from an old, severe, 
crabbed Cato, would have wanted something of propriety in the 
young Scipios, the ornament of the Roman nobility, in the 
flower of their life. But the times, the morals, the masters,the 
scholars, have all undergone a thorough revolution. It is a 
vile, illiberal school, this new French academy of the sans cu- 
lottes. There is nothing in it that is fit for a gentleman to 
learn. 

Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself, that the 
parents of the growing generation will be satisfied with what 
is to be taught to their children in Westminster, in Eton, or in 
"Winchester : I still indulge the hope that no grown gentleman 
or nobleman of our time will think of finishing at Mr. Thel- 



A LETTER TO A KOBLE LORD. • 265 

wall's lecture 3 whatever may have been left incomplete at the 
old universities of his country. I would give to Lord Grenville 
and Mr. Pitt for a motto, what was said of a Eoman censor or 
praetor, (or what was he?) who, in virtue of a Senatus con- 
sultum, shut up certain academies : Cludere ludum impudentice 
jussit.^ Every honest father of a family in the kingdom will 
rejoice at the breaking up for the holidays, and will pray that 
there may be a very long vacation in all such schools. 

The awful state -of the time, and not myself, or my own justi- 
fication, is my true object in what I now write ; or in what I 
shall ever write or say. It little signifies to the world what 
becomes of such things as me, or even as the Duke of Bedford. 
What I say about either of us is nothing more than a vehicle, 
as you, my Lord, will easily perceive, to convey my sentiments 
on matter far more worthy of your attention. It is when I 
stick to my apparent first subject that I ought to apologize, not 
when I depart from it. I therefore must beg your Lordship's 
pardon for again resuming it after this very short digression ; 
assuring you that I shall never altogether lose sight of such 
matter as persons abler than I am may turn to some profit. 

The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the 
attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, 
which he considers as excessive, and out of all bounds. 

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, 
whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure 
upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods ; and the 
Duke of Bedford may dream ; and as dreams (even his golden 
dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, 
his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, but took the 
subject-matter from the Crown grants to his own family. This is 
"the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of 
putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The 
grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to 
outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of 
Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. 
He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk ; he plays and frolics in 
the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he 

3 John Thelwall was at that time one of the most enthusiastic advocates of 
the French cause, and his " flaming orations " brought him in peril from the gov- 
ernment. Talfourd, in his account of Charles Lamb's " dead companions," gives 
a charming sketch of him, from which I quote the following: " Starting with im- 
perfect education from the thraldom of domestic oppression, with slender 
knowledge, but with fiery zeal, into the dangers of political enterprise, and 
treading fearlessly on the verge of sedition, he saw nothing before him but 
powers which he assumed to be despotism and vice, and rushed headlong to 
crush them." 

4 He ordered the school of impudence to be closed. 



266 



BURKE. 



lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his 
fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through 
which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and cov- 
ers me all over with the spray,— every thing of him and about 
him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dispensa- 
tion of the royal favour ? 

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the 
public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he 
holds, and these services of mine, on the favourable construction 
of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. 
In private life I have not at all the honour of acquaintance with 
the noble Duke. But I ought to presume, a,nd it costs me noth- 
ing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love 
of all who live with him. But as to public service, why, truly it 
would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself in rank, 
in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure, 
with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his 
services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would 
not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any 
public merit of his own to keep alive the idea of the services 
by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits, 
whatever they are, are original and personal ; his are derivative. 
It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this 
inexhaustible fund of. merit, which makes his Grace so very del- 
icate and exceptious about the merit of all other grantees of the 
Crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should 
have said, 'tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law; 
what have I to do with it or its history ? He would naturally 
have said, on his side, 'tis this man's fortune. He is as good 
now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am 
a young man with very old pensions; he is an old man with 
very young pensions,— that's all. 

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to 
compare my little merit with that which obtained from the 
Crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he tram- 
ples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals ? I 
would willingly leave him to the herald's college, which the phi- 
losophy of the sans-culoltes (prouder by far than all the Garters, 
and JSTorroys, and Clarencieux, and Rouge Dragons, 5 that ever 
pranced in a procession of what his friends call aristocrats and 
despots) will abolish with contumely and scorn. These histori- 



5 Rouge Dragon is the name, or title, of an officer in the College of Heralds. 
Garter was the title of the first or principal king-at-arms in England; so called 
because he was a herald belonging to the Order of the Garter. Clarencieux was 
the title of the second king-at-arms, and Norroy that of the third. The latter 
two had only provincial jurisdictions in England. 



A LETTER TO A HOBLE LORD. 267 

ans, recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms, differ wholly 
from that other description of historians who never assign any 
act of politicians to a good motive. These gentle historians, on 
the contrary, dip their pens in nothing but the milk of human 
kindness. They seek no further for merit than the preamble of 
a patent or the inscription on a tomb. With them every man 
created a peer is first a hero ready made. They judge of every 
man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled ; and the 
more offices the more ability. Every general officer with them 
is a Marlborough ; every statesman a Burleigh ; every judge a 
Murray or a Yorke. 6 They who, alive, were laughed at or pitied 
by all their acquaintance, make as good a figure as the best of 
them in the pages of Guillim, Edmondson, and Collins. 7 

To these recorders, so full of good nature to the great and 
prosperous, I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell, and 
Earl of Bedford, and the merits of his grants. But the aulna- 
ger, the weigher, the meter of grants, will not suffer us to 
acquiesce in the judgment of the prince reigning at the time 
when they were made. They are never good to those who earn 
them. Well then, since the new grantees have war made on 
them by the old, and that 8 the word of the sovereign is not to 
be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men 
have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of 
their house. 

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, 
was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, 
raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there 
generally is some resemblance of character to create these 
relations, the favourite was in all likelihood much such another 
as his master. The first of those immoderate grants was not 
taken from the ancient demesne of the Crown, but from the 
recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The 
lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass 
to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confis- 
cation, the favourites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy 
favourite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, 
infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the 

6 Murray and Yorke are the family names of two men who were then highly 
distinguished in the law, and were raised to the peerage, on account of their 
legal eminence, as the Earl of Mansfield and the Earl of Hardwick. 

7 These are the names of authors once distinguished in the lore of chivalry 
or heraldry. 

8 Here, in since and that, we have a relic of the old lingual usage, for that, 
if that, since that, though that, when that, &c. In a good many instances, Burke, 
instead of repeating the first of these words in a second clause or memher, sub- 
stitutes the other. Here, instead of that, present usage would repeat since. 



268 BUEKE. 

plunder of the Church. 9 In truth his Grace is somewhat 
excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its 
quantity, but in its kind so different from his own. 

Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign ; his from 
Henry the Eighth. 

Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person 
of illustrious rank, 1 or in the pillage of any body of unoffending 
men. His grants were from the aggregate and consolidated 
funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions 
voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors, with the 
gibbet at their door. 

The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of 
being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who 
oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with 
particular fury on every thing that was great and noble. Mine 
has been in endeavouring to screen every man, in every class, 
from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and 
eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating princes, confis- 
cating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the 
most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy. 

The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was 
in giving his hand to the work and partaking the spoil with a 
prince who plundered a part of the national Church of his 
time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the 
national Church of my own time and my own country, and the 
whole of the national Churches of all countries, from the prin- 
ciples and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, 
thence to a contempt of all prescriptive titles, thence to the 
pillage of all property, and thence to universal desolation. 

The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a 
favourite and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to 
their native country. My endeavour was to obtain liberty for 
the municipal country in which I was born, and for all descrip- 
tions and denominations in it. Mine was to support with 
unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege, every fran- 
chise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive 
country ; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief 
seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every 
climate, language, and religion, in the vast domain that is still 
under the protection, and the larger that was once under the 
protection, of the British Crown. 

His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his 

9 The dissolution and suppression of the monasteries supplied Henry the 
Eighth with abundance of land wherewith to reward his minions. 

1 Referring especially to the execution of the Duke of Buckingham; who, 
however, could hardly be called innocent. 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 2G9 

master and mado his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, 
and depopulation on his country. Mine were, under a benevo- 
lent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and 
agriculture of his kingdom ; in which his Majesty shows an 
eminent example, who even in his amusements is a patriot, and 
in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil. 

His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by 
the arts of a Court, and the protection of a Wolsey, to the emi- 
nence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence 
was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people 
to rebellion. My merit was to awaken the sober part of 
the country, that they might put themselves on their guard 
against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent 
lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if 
ever they should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but 
in the reverse order ; that is, by instigating a corrupted popu- 
lace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introducing a 
tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor 
supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold 
in the despotism of Henry the Eighth. 

The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's House 
was that of being concerned as a counsellor of State in advising, 
and in his person executing, the conditions of a dishonourable 
peace with France, — the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, 
then our out-guard on the Continent. By that surrender, Cal- 
ais, the key of Trance, and the bridle in the mouth of that 
power, was, not many years afterwards, finally lost. My merit 
has been in resisting the power and pride of France, under any 
form of its rule ; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal and 
earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could 
assume, — the worst indeed which the prime cause and principle 
of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavour by every 
means to excite a spirit in the House where I had the honour of 
a seat, for carrying on, with early vigour and decision, the most 
clearly just and necessary war that this or any nation ever car- 
ried on, in order to save my country from the iron yoke of its 
power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles ; 
to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, 
the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good- 
humour of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence 
which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole 
moral, and in a great degree the whole physical world, having 
done both in the focus of its most intense malignity. 

The labours of his Grace's founder merited the curses, not 
loud but deep, of the Commons of England, on whom lie and 
his master had effected a complete Parliamentary Heform, by 



270 BURKE. 

making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the true and 
adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and undone 
people. My merits were in having had an active, though not 
always an ostentatious, share in every one Act, without excep- 
tion, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in 
having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, 
and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended 
my services bj 7- a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their 
own journals of their constitutional rights, and a vindication of 
their constitutional conduct. I laboured in all things to merit 
their inward approbation, and (along with the assistance of the 
largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavours) I received 
their free, unbiassed, public, and solemn thanks. 

Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the 
Crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune as 
balanced against mine. In the name of common sense, why 
should the Duke of Bedford think that none but of the House 
of Bussell are entitled to the favour of the Crown? Why 
should he imagine that no king of England has been capable of 
judging of merit but King Henry the Eighth ? Indeed, he will 
pardon me ; he is a little mistaken : all virtue did not end in 
the first Earl of Bedford. All discernment did not lose its vis- 
ion when his creator closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigour 
on the disproportion between merit and reward in others, and 
they will make no inquiry into the origin of his fortune. They 
will regard with much more satisfaction, as he will contemplate 
with infinitely more advantage, whatever in his pedigree has 
been dulcified by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a 
long flow of generations, from the hard, acidulous, metallic 
tincture of the spring. It is little to be doubted, that several of 
his forefathers in that long series have degenerated into hon- 
our and virtue. Let the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) 
reject with scorn and horror the counsels of the lecturers, those 
wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would tempt him, 
in the troubles of his country, to seek another enormous fortune 
from the forfeitures of another nobility, and the plunder of an- 
other Church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all 
the energy of his youth, and all the resources of his wealth, to 
crush rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, 
and rebellious movements that have no provocation in tyranny. 

Then will be forgot the rebellions which, by a doubtful pri- 
ority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On 
such a conduct in the noble Duke, many of his countrymen 
might, and with some excuse might, give way to the enthusiasm 
of their gratitude, and, in the dashing style of some of the old 
declaimers, cry out, that if the fates had found no other way in 



A LETTER TO A tfOBLE LORD. 271 

which they could give a Duke of Bedford and his opulence as 
props to a tottering world, then the butchery of the Duke of 
Buckingham might be tolerated: it might be regarded even 
with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they saw 
the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs who suffer under 
the cruel confiscation of this day ; whilst they behold with ad- 
miration his zealous protection of the virtuous and loyal nobility 
of France, and his manly support of his brethren, the yet stand- 
ing nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's 
merit would be pure and new and sharp, as fresh from the 
mint of honour. As he pleased he might reflect honour on his 
predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed 
him. He might be the propagator of the stock of honour, or 
the root of it, as he thought proper. 

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, 
I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the medi- 
ocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family : I should 
have left a son who, in all the points in which personal merit 
can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in 
honour, in generosity, in humanity,, in every liberal sentiment 
and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown him- 
self inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom 
he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted 
all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged 
more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every 
deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not 
have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting 
reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself 
a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every 
day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty of the 
Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. 
He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment what- 
ever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent 
moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. 

But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and 
whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained 
it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness 
might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me ; and 
I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has 
scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours, I am torn 
up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and 
prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, 
and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself 
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the at- 
tacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is 
proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irri- 



272 



BURKE. 



table nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and 
ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, 
and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill- 
natured neighbours of his who visited his dunghill to read 
moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am 
alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, 
my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I 
would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame 
and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It 
is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who 
are at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, 
as we are made to shrink from pain and poverty and disease. 
It is an instinct ; and, under the direction of reason, instinct is 
always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who 
ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who 
should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ances- 
tors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in 
memory) that act of piety which he would have performed to 
me, — I owe it to him to show that he was not descended, as the 
Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent. 

The Crown has considered me after long service : the Crown 
has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance. He has had a long 
credit for any service which he may perform hereafter. He is 
secure, and long may he be secure, in his advance, whether he 
performs any services or not. But let him take care how he 
endangers the safety of that Constitution which secures his own 
utility or his own insignificance ; or how he discourages those 
who take up, even puny arms, to defend an order of things 
which, like the Sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and 
the worthless. His grants are ingrafted on the public law of 
Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. 
They are guarded by the sacred rules of prescription, found in 
that full treasury of jurisprudence from which the jejuneness 
and penury of our municipal law has, by degrees, been enriched 
and strengthened. This prescription I had my share (a very 
full share) in bringing to its perfection. The Duke of Bedford 
will stand as long as prescriptive law endures ; as long as the 
great stable laws of property, common to us with all civilized 
nations, are kept in their integrity, and without the smallest in- 
termixture of laws, maxims, principles, or precedents of the 
Grand Revolution. They are secure against all changes but 
one. The whole Revolutionary system, institutes, digest, code, 
novels, text, gloss, comment, are not only not the same, but 
they are the very reverse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all 
the laws on which civil life has hitherto been upheld in all the 
governments of the world. The learned professors of the Rights 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 273 

of Man regard prescription not as a title to bar all claim set up 
against all possession ; but they look on prescription as itself a 
bar against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an imme- 
morial possession to be no more than a long-continued, and 
therefore an aggravated injustice. 

Such are their ideas, such their religion, and such their 
law. But as to our country and our race, as long as the well- 
compacted structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, 
the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, 
defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stantl 
inviolate on the brow of the British Sion; as long as the British 
monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the 
State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the 
majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kin- 
dred and coeval towers ; — as long as this awful structure shall 
oversee and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds and 
dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear 
from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of Trance. As long as 
our sovereign lord the King, and his faithful subjects, the 
Lords and Commons of this realm, — the triple cord, which no 
man can break ; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge 
of this nation ; the firm guarantees of each other's being, and 
each other's rights ; the joint and several securities, each in its 
place and order, for every kind and every quality of property 
and of dignity ; — as long as these endure, so long the Duke of 
Bedford is safe : and we are all safe together, — the high from 
the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity; the low from 
the iron hand of oppression and insolent spurn of contempt. 
Amen ! and so be it : and so it will be, 

Dum donius ^Eneas Capitoli immobile saxum 
Accolet; imperiumque pater Romanns habebit. 2 

But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its sophistical 
rights of man to falsify the account, and its sword as a make- 
weight to throw into the scale, shall be introduced into our city 
by a misguided populace, set on by proud great men, them- 
selves blinded and intoxicated by a frantic ambition, we shall 
all of us perish and be overwhelmed in a common ruin. If a 
great storm blow on our coast, it will cast the whales on the 
strand as well as the periwinkles. His Grace will not survive 
the poor grantee he despises, no, not for a twelvemonth. If the 
great look for safety in the services they render to this Gallic 
cause, it is to be foolish even above the weight of privilege 

2 So long as the House of iEneas dwells near the immovable rock of the Cap- 
itol, and the Roman wields the sword of empire. 



274 BUBKE. 

allowed to wealth. If his Grace be one of these whom they en- 
deavour to proselytize, he ought to be aware of the character of 
the sect whose doctrines he is invited to embrace. "With them 
insurrection is the most sacred of revolutionary duties to the 
State. Ingratitude to benefactors is the first of revolutionary 
virtues. Ingratitude is indeed their four cardinal virtues com- 
pacted and amalgamated into one ; and he will find in it every 
thing that has happened since the commencement of the philo- 
sophic Revolution to this hour. If he pleads the merit of hav- 
ing performed the duty of insurrection against the order he 
lives in, (God forbid he ever should!) the merit of others will be 
to perform the duty of insurrection against him. If he pleads 
(again God forbid he should ! and I do not suspect he will) his 
ingratitude to the Crown for its creation of his family, others 
will plead their right and duty to pay him in kind. They will 
laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment and his wax. 
His deeds will be drawn out with the rest of the lumber of his 
evidence-room, and burnt to the tune of ca ira in the courts of 
Bedford (then Equality) House. 

Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile re- 
proaches to me with a friendly admonition to himself ? Can I 
be blamed for pointing out to him in what manner he is likely 
to be affected, if the sect of the cannibal philosophers of France 
should proselytize any considerable part of this people, and, by 
their joint proselytizing arms, should conquer that government 
to which his Grace does not seem to me to give all the support 
his own security demands? Surely it is proper that he, and 
that others like him, should know the true genius of this sect ; 
what their opinions are ; what they have done, and to whom ; 
and what (if a prognostic is to be formed from the dispositions 
and actions of men) it is certain they will do hereafter. He 
ought to know that they have sworn assistance, the only en- 
gagement they ever will keep, to all in this country who bear a 
resemblance to themselves, and who think, as such, that the 
whole duty of man consists in destruction. They are a misallied 
and disparaged branch of the house of Nimrod. They are the 
Duke of Bedford's natural hunters, and he is their natural 
game. Because he is not very profoundly reflecting, he sleeps 
in profound security : they, on the contrary, are always vigi- 
lant, active, enterprising, and, though far removed from any 
knowledge which makes men estimable or useful, in all the in- 
struments and resources of evil their leaders are not meanly 
instructed or insufficiently furnished. In the French Revolu- 
tion every thing is new ; and, from want of preparation to meet 
so unlooked-for an evil, every thing is dangerous. Never, 
before this time, was a set of literary men converted into a 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE LOED. 275 

gang of robbers and assassins. Never before did a den of bra- 
voes and banditti assume the garb and tone of an academy of 
philosophers. 

Let me tell his Grace, that an union of such characters, mon- 
strous as it seems, is not made for producing despicable ene- 
mies. But if they are formidable as foes, as friends they are 
dreadful indeed. The men of property in France confiding in 
a force which seemed to be irresistible, because it had never 
been tried, neglected to prepare for a conflict with their ene- 
mies at their own weapons. They were found in such a situa- 
tion as the Mexicans were, when they were attacked by the 
dogs, the cavalry, the iron, and the gunpowder, of a handful of 
bearded men, whom they did not know to exist in nature. This 
is a comparison that some, I think, have made ; and it is just. 
In France they had their enemies within their houses. They 
were even in the bosoms of many of them. But they had not 
sagacity to discern their savage character. They seemed tame, 
and even caressing. They had nothing but douce humanite in 
their mouth. They could not bear the punishment of the mild- 
est laws on the greatest criminals. The slightest severity of 
justice made their flesh creep. The very idea that war existed 
in the world disturbed their repose. Military glory was no 
more, with them, than a splendid infamy. Hardly would they 
hear of self-defence, which they reduced within such bounds 
as to leave it no defence at all. All this while they meditated 
the confiscations and massacres we have seen. Had any one 
told these unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen how, and by 
whom, the grand fabric of the French monarchy under which 
they flourished would be subverted, they would not have pit- 
ied him as a visionary, but would have turned from him as 
what they call a mauvais plaisant. Yet we have seen what has 
happened. The persons who have suffered from the cannibal 
philosophy of France are so like the Duke of Bedford, that 
nothing but his Grace's probably not speaking quite so good 
French could enable us to find out any difference. A great 
many of them had as pompous titles as he, and were of full as 
illustrious a race : some few of them had fortunes as ample : 
several of them, without meaning the least disparagement to 
the Duke of Bedford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as val- 
iant, and as well educated, and as complete in all the linea- 
ments of men of honour, as he is : and to all this they had ad- 
ded the powerful outguard of a military profession, which, in its 
nature, renders men somewhat more cautious than those who 
have nothing to attend to but the lazy enjoyment of undis- 
turbed possessions. But security was their ruin. They are 
dashed to pieces in the storm, and our shores are covered with 



27G BURKE. 

the wrecks. If they had been aware that such a thing might 
happen, such a thing never could have happened. 

I assure his Grace that, if I state to him the designs of his 
enemies in a manner which may appear to him ludicrous and 
impossible, I tell him nothing that has not exactly happened, 
point by point, but twenty-four miles from our own shore. I 
assure him that the Frenchified faction, more encouraged than 
others are warned by what has happened in France, look at 
him and his landed possessions as an object at once of curiosity 
and rapacity. He is made for them in every part of their 
double character. As robbers, to them he is a noble booty ; as 
speculatists, he is a glorious subject for their experimental 
philosophy. He affords matter for an extensive analysis, in all 
the branches of their science, geometrical, physical, civil, and 
political. These philosophers are fanatics : independent of 
any interest, which if it operated alone would make them much 
more tractable, they are carried with such a headlong rage 
towards every desperate trial, that they would sacrifice the 
whole human race to the slightest of their experiments. I am 
better able to enter into the character of this description of men 
than the noble Duke can be. I have lived long and variously 
in the world. "Without any considerable pretensions to litera- 
ture in myself, I have aspired to the love of letters. I have 
lived for a great many years in habitudes with those who pro- 
fessed them. I can form a tolerable estimate of what is likely 
to happen from a character chiefly dependent for fame and 
fortune on knowledge and talent, as well in its morbid and per- 
verted state as in that which is sound and natural. Naturally 
men so formed and finished are the first gifts of Providence 
to the world. But when they have once thrown off the fear of 
God, which was in all ages too often the case, and the fear of 
man, which is now the case, and when in that state they come 
to understand one another, and to act in corps, a more dreadful 
calamity cannot arise out of Hell to scourge mankind. Nothing 
can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thoroughbred 
metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a 
wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is 
like that of the principle of evil himself, incorporeal, pure, 
unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated evil. It is no easy operation 
to eradicate humanity from the human breast. What Shake- 
speare calls "the compunctious visitings of nature" will some- 
times knock at their hearts, and protest against their mur- 
derous speculations. But they have a means of compounding 
with their nature. Their humanity is not dissolved. They 
only give it a long prorogation. They arc ready to declare that 
they do not think two thousand years too long a period for the 



A LETTEE TO A NOBLE LORD. 277 

good that they pursue. It is remarkable that they never see 
any way to their projected good but by the road of some evil. 
Their imagination is not fatigued with the contemplation of 
human suffering through the wild waste of centuries added to 
centuries of misery and desolation. Their humanity is at their 
horizon; and, like the horizon, it always flies before them. 
The geometricians and the chemists bring, the one from the 
dry bones of their diagrams, and the other from the soot of 
their furnaces, dispositions that make them worse than indif- 
ferent about those feelings and habitudes which are the sup- 
port of the moral world. Ambition is come upon them sud- 
denly ; they are intoxicated with it, and it has rendered them 
fearless of the danger which may from thence arise to others 
or to themselves. These philosophers consider men, in their 
experiments, no more than they do mice in an air-pump, or 
in a recipient of mephitic gas. Whatever his Grace may think 
of himself, they look upon him, and every thing that belongs 
to him, with no more regard than they do upon the whiskers of 
that little long-tailed animal that has been long the game 
of the grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, 
green-eyed philosophers, whether going upon two legs or upon 
four. 

His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an 
agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult upon the 
rights of man. They are more extensive than the territory of 
many of the Grecian republics ; and they are without compari- 
son more fertile than most of them. There are now republics 
in Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, which do not possess 
any thing like so fair and ample a domain. There is scope for 
seven philosophers to proceed in their analytical experiments, 
upon Harrington's seven different forms of republics, in the 
acres of this one Duke. Hitherto they have been wholly un- 
productive to speculation ; fitted for nothing but to fatten bul- 
locks, and to produce grain for beer, still more to stupefy the 
dull English understanding. Abbe Sieyes has whole nests of 
pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready made, ticketed, sorted, 
and numbered ; suited to every season and every fancy ; some 
with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the 
bottom at the top ; some plain, some flowered ; some distin- 
guished for their simplicity, others for their complexity ; some 
of blood colour ; some of houe de Paris; some with directories, 
others without a direction ; some with councils of elders and 
councils of youngsters ; some without any council at all. Some 
where the electors choose the representatives ; others, where 
the representatives choose the electors. Some in long coats, 
and some in short cloaks ; some with pantaloons ; some with- 



278 



BURKE. 



out breeches. Some with five-shilling qualifications; some 
totally unqualified. So that no constitution-fancier may go 
un suited from his shop, provided he loves a pattern of pillage, 
oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, exile, revolu- 
tionary judgment, and legalized premeditated murder, in any 
shapes into which they can be put. What a pity it is that the 
progress of experimental philosophy should be checked by his 
Grace's monopoly ! Such are their sentiments, I assure him ; 
such is their language, when they dare to speak ; and such are 
their proceedings, when they have the means to act. 

Their geographers and geometricians have been some time out 
of practice. It is some time since they have divided their own 
country into squares. That figure has lost the charms of its 
novelty. They want new lands for new trials. It is not only 
the geometricians of the republic that find him a good subject, 
the chemists have bespoken him after the geometricians have 
done with him. As the first set have an eye on his Grace's 
lands, the chemists are not less taken with his buildings. They 
consider mortar as a very anti-revolutionary invention in its 
present state ; but, properly employed, an admirable material 
for overturning all establishments. They have found that the 
gunpowder of ruins is far the fittest for making other ruins, and 
so ad infinitum. They have calculated what quantity of matter 
convertible into nitre is to be found in Bedford House, in Wo- 
burn Abbey, and in what his Grace and his trustees have still 
suffered to stand of that foolish royalist Inigo Jone.s, in Co vent 
Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffee-houses, all alike are 
destined to be mingled, and equalized, and blended into one 
common rubbish ; and, well sifted and lixiviated, to crystallize 
into true, democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their 
academy del Cimento, (per antiphrasin,) with Morveau and Has- 
senfrats at its head, have computed that the brave sans-culottes 
may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe for a twelve- 
month, out of the rubbish of the Duke of Bedford's buildings. 3 

While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with these 



3 There is nothing on which the leaders value themselves more than on the 
chemical operations by Avhich they convert the pride of aristocracy to an instru- 
ment of its own destruction. They tell lis that hitherto things " had not yet been 
properly and in a revolutionary manner explored." — "The strong chateaus, 
those feudal fortresses that tvere ordered to be demolished, attracted next the at- 
tention of your committee. Nature thei-e had secretly regained her rights, and 
had produced saltpetre for the purpose, as it should seem, of facilitating the exe- 
cution of your decree by preparing the means of destruction. From these ruins, 
which still frown on the liberties of the republic, we have extracted the means 
of producing good ; and those piles which have hitherto glutted the pride of 
despots, will soon furnish wherewithal to tame the traitors, and to overwhelm 
the disaffected." — Author's Note. 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 279 

experiments upon the Duke of Bedford's houses, the Sieyes, 
and the rest of the analytical legislators and constitution- 
venders, are quite as busy in their trade of decomposing organ- 
ization, in forming his Grace's vassals into primary assemblies, 
national guards, first, second, and third requisitioners, commit- 
tees of research, conductors of the travelling guillotine, judges 
of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen, supervisors of 
domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and assessors of 
the maximum. 

The din of all this smithery may some time or other possibly 
wake this noble Duke, and push him to an endeavour to save 
some little matter from their experimental philosophy. If he 
pleads his grants from the Crown, he is ruined at the outset. 
If he pleads he has received them from the pillage of supersti- 
tious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a little, be- 
cause they are enemies to all corporations, and to all religion. 
However, they will soon recover themselves, and will tell his 
Grace, or his learned counsel, that all such property belongs to 
the nation; and that it would be more wise for him, if he wishes 
to live the natural term of a citizen, (that is, according to Con- 
dorcet's calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass for 
an usurper upon the national property. This is what the Ser- 
jeants at law of the rights of man will say to the puny appren- 
tices of the common law of England. 

Is the genius of philosophy not yet known ? You may as well 
think the garden of the Tuileries was well protected with the 
cords of riband insultingly stretched by the National Assembly 
to keep the sovereign canaille from intruding on the retirement 
of the poor King of the French, as that such flimsy cobwebs 
will stand between the savages of the Revolution and their 
natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers ; brave sans- 
culottes are no formalists. They will no more regard a Mar- 
quess of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock ; the Lord of 
Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than the 
Prior of Woburn ; they will make no difference between the 
superior of a Covent Garden of nuns and of a Covent Garden 
of another description.* They will not care a rush whether his 
coat is long or short ; whether the colour be purple or blue and 
buff. They will not trouble their heads with what part of his 
head his hair is cut from ; and they will look with equal respect 
on a tonsure and a crop. Their only question will be that of 
their Legendre, or some other of their legislative butchers, how 
he cuts up ; how he tallows in the caul, or on the kidneys. 

4 Covent Garden theatre, in London, then belonged to the Duke of Bedford. 
In what precedes, Burke alludes to the Duke's other titles, as Baron of Woburn, 
and Marquess of Tavistock. 



280 BURKE. 



otte 



Is it not a singular phenomenon that, whilst the sans-culotte 
carcass-butchers and the philosophers of the shambles are 
pricking their clotted lines upon his hide, and, like the print of 
the poor ox that we see in the shop-wiudows at Charing Cross, 
alive as he is, and thinking no harm in the world, he is divided 
into rumps, and sirloins, and briskets, and into all sorts of pieces 
for roasting, boiling, and stewing, — that, all the while they are 
measuring Mm, his Grace is measuring me ; is invidiously com- 
paring the bounty of the Crown with the deserts of the defender 
of his order, and in the same moment fawning on those who 
have the knife half out of the sheath ; — poor innocent ! 

"Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood." 

ISTo man lives too long, who lives to do with spirit, and suffer 
with resignation, what Providence pleases to command, or in- 
flict ; but indeed they are sharp incommodities which beset old 
age. It was but the other day, that, on putting in order some 
things which had been brought here on my taking leave of Lon- 
don for ever, I looked over a number of fine portraits, most of 
them of persons now dead, but whose society, in my better 
days, made this a proud and happy place. Amongst these was 
the picture of Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artist worthy 
of the subject, the excellent friend of that excellent man from 
their earliest youth, and a common friend of us both, with 
whom we lived for many years without a moment of coldness, 
of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to the day of our final 
separation. 

I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best 
men of his age ; and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. 
He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very 
last beat. It was after his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me 
this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended 
him through that his agony of glory ; what part my son took 
in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious 
passion with which he attached himself to all my connections ; 
with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in courting 
almost every sort of enmity for his sake, — I believe he felt, just 
as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I par- 
took indeed of this honour, with several of the first and best and 
ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of them; 
and I am sure that if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and 
to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in 
it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I 
should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good 
will and more pride, though with far other feelings, than I par- 



A LETTER TO A NOBLE LOED. 281 

took of the general flow of national joy that attended the justice 
that was done to his virtue. 

Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to 
diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years 
we live in retrospect alone ; and, wholly unfitted for the society 
of vigorous life, we enjoy the best balm to all wounds, the con- 
solation of friendship in those only whom we have lost for ever. 
Feeling the loss of Lord Keppel at all times, at no time did I 
feel it so much as on the first day when I was attacked in the 
House of Lords. 

Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in its 
place, and, with a mild, parental reprehension to his nephew 
the Duke of Bedford, he would have told him that the favour 
of that gracious Prince who had honoured his virtues with the 
government of the navy of Great Britain, and with a seat in the 
hereditary great council of his kingdom, was not undeservedly 
shown to the friend of the best portion of his life, and his faith- 
ful companion and counsellor under his rudest trials. He would 
have told him that, to whomever else these reproaches might 
be becoming, they were not decorous in his near kindred. He 
would have told him that when men in that rank lose decorum 
they lose every thing. 

On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel ; but the public loss 
of him in this awful crisis ! — I speak from much knowledge of 
the person, he never would have listened to any compromise 
with the rabble rout of this sans-culotterie of Prance. His 
goodness of heart, his reason, his taste, his public duty, his 
principles, his prejudices, would have repelled him for ever 
from all connection with that horrid medley of madness, vice, 
impiety, and crime. 

Lord Keppel had two countries, — one of descent, and one of 
birth. Their interest and their glory are the same ; and his 
mind was capacious of both. His family was noble, and it was 
Dutch ; that is, he was of the oldest and purest nobility that 
Europe can boast, among a people renowned above all others 
for love of their native land. Though it was never shown in 
insult to any human being, Lord Keppel was something high. 
It was a wild stock of pride, on which the tenderest of all hearts 
had grafted the milder virtues. He valued ancient nobility ; 
and he was not disinclined to augment it with new honours. 
He valued the old nobility and the new, not as an excuse for 
inglorious sloth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. He 
considered it as a sort of cure for selfishness and a narrow mind; 
conceiving that a man born in an elevated place in himself was 
nothing, but every thing in what went before and what was to 
come after him. Without much speculation, but by the sure 



282 



BURKE. 



instinct of ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain, un- 
sophisticated natural understanding, he felt that no great com- 
monwealth could by any possibility long subsist without a body 
of some kind or other of nobility, decorated with honour, and 
fortified by privilege. This nobility forms the chain that con- 
nects the ages of a nation, which otherwise (with Mr. Paine) 
would soon be taught that no one generation can bind another. 
He felt that no political fabric could be well made without some 
such order of things as might, through a series of time, afford a 
rational hope of securing unity, coherence, consistency, and 
stability to the State. He felt that nothing else can protect it 
against the levity of Courts, and the greater levity of the multi- 
tude. That to talk of hereditary monarchy, without any thing 
else of hereditary reverence in the commonwealth, was a low- 
minded absurdity, fit only for those detestable "fools aspiring 
to be knaves" who began to forge in 1789 the false money of 
the French constitution. That it is one fatal objection to all 
new-fancied and new-fabricated republics, (among a people 
who, once possessing such an advantage, have wickedly and in- 
solently rejected it,) that the prejudice of an old nobility is a 
thing that cannot be made. It may be improved, it may be cor- 
rected, it may be replenished ; men may be taken from it or 
aggregated to it, but the thing itself is matter of- inveterate 
opinion, and therefore cannot be matter of mere positive insti- 
tution. He felt that this nobility in fact does not exist in wrong 
of other orders of the State, but by them, and for them. 

I .knew the man I speak of: and, if we can divine the future 
out of what we collect from the past, no person living would 
look Avith more scorn and horror on the impious parricide com- 
mitted on all their ancestry, and on the desperate attainder 
passed on all their posterity, by the Orleans, and the Rochefou- 
caults, and the Fayettes, and the Viscomtes de Xoailles, and 
the false Perigords, and the long et cmtera of the perfidious 
sans-culottes of the Court, who like demoniacs, possessed with a 
spirit of fallen pride and inverted ambition, abdicated their dig- 
nities, disowned their families, betrayed the most sacred of all 
trusts, and, by breaking to pieces a great link of society and all 
the cramps and holdings of the State, brought eternal confusion 
and desolation on their country. For the fate of the miscreant 
parricides themselves he would have had no pity. Compassion 
for the myriads of men, of whom the world was not worthy, 
who by their means have perished in prisons, or on scaffolds, or 
are pining in beggary and exile, would leave no room in his, or 
in any well-formed mind, for any such sensation. We are not 
made at once to pity the oppressor and the oppressed. 

Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear to behold 



A LETTER TO A KOBLE LOED. 283 

his kindred, the descendants of the brave nobility of Holland, 
whose blood, prodigally poured out, had, more than all the 
canals, meres, and inundations of their country, protected their 
independence, to behold them bowed in the basest servitude to 
the basest and vilest of the human race ; in servitude to those 
who in no respect were superior in dignity, or could aspire to a 
better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants, to whose 
sceptered pride they had opposed an elevation of soul that 
surmounted, and overpowered, the loftiness of Castile, the 
haughtiness of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance of 
France ? 

Could he with patience bear, that the children of that nobility 
who would have deluged their country and given it to the sea, 
rather than submit to Louis the Fourteenth, who was then in 
his meridian glory, when his arms were conducted by the Tu- 
rennes, by the Luxembourgs, by the Boumers ; when his coun- 
cils were directed by the Colberts and the Louvois ; when his 
tribunals were filled by the Lamoignons and the Daguessaus, — 
that these should be given up to the cruel sport of the Piche- 
grus, the Jourdans, the Santerres, under the Rolands, the Bris- 
sots, and Gorfas, and Robespierres, the Beubels, the Carnots, 
and Talliens, and Dantons, and the whole tribe of regicides, 
robbers, and revolutionary judges, that, from the rotten carcass 
of their own murdered country, have poured out innumerable 
swarms of the lowest, and at once the most destructive, of the 
classes of animated nature, which, like columns of locusts, have 
laid waste the fairest part of the world ? 

Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the virtuous 
patricians, that happy union of the noble and the burgher, who, 
with signal prudence and integrity, had long governed the cit- 
ies of the confederate republic, the cherishing fathers of their 
country, who, denying commerce to themselves, made it flour- 
ish in a manner unexampled under their protection? Could 
Keppel have borne that a vile faction should totally destroy 
this harmonious construction, in favour of a robbing democracy, 
founded on the spurious rights of man ? 

He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed in the 
interests of Europe, and he could not have heard with patience, 
that the country of Grotius, the cradle of the law of nations, 
and one of the richest repositories of all law, should be taught 
a new code by the ignorant flippancy of Thomas Paine, the pre- 
sumptuous foppery of La Payette, with his stolen rights of man 
in his hand, the wild, profligate intrigue and turbulency of 
Marat, and the impious sophistry of Condorcet, in his insolent 
addresses to the Batavian republic. 

Could Keppel, who idolized the house of Nassau, who was 



284 BURKE. 

himself given to England along with the blessings of the British 
and Dutch Revolutions ; with revolutions of stability; with rev- 
olutions which consolidated and married the liberties and the 
interests of the two nations for ever, — could he see the fountain 
of British liberty itself in servitude to France ? Could he see 
with patience a Prince of Orange expelled as a sort of diminu- 
tive despot, with every kind of contumely, from the country 
which that family of deliverers had so often rescued from sla- 
very, and obliged to live in exile in another country, which owes 
its liberty to his House ? 5 

Would Keppel have heard with patience that the conduct to 
be held on such occasions was to become short by the knees to 
the faction of the homicides, to entreat them quietly to retire ? 
or, if the fortune of war should drive them from their first 
wicked and unprovoked invasion, that no security should be 
taken, no arrangement made, no barrier formed, no alliance en- 
tered into for the security of that which, under a foreign name, 
is the most precious part of England? What would he have 
said, if it was even proposed that the Austrian Netherlands 
(which ought to be a barrier to Holland, and the tie of an alli- 
ance, to protect her against any species of rule that might be 
erected, or even be restored in France) should be formed into a 
republic under her influence, and dependent upon her power ? 

But, above all, what would he have said, if he had heard it 
made a matter of accusation against me, by his nephew the 
Duke of Bedford, that I was the author of the war ? Had I a 
mind to keep that high distinction to myself, as from pride I 
might, but from justice I dare not, he would have snatched his 
share of it from my hand, and held it with the grasp of a dying 
convulsion to his end. 

It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to assume to 
myself the glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to his Min- 
isters, and to his Parliament, and to the far greater majority of 
his faithful people: but, had I stood alone to counsel, and that 
all were determined to be guided by my advice, and to follow it 
implicitly, then I should have been the sole author of a war. 
But it should have been a war on my ideas and my principles. 
However, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with 
regard to the war with regicide, he will find my guilt confined 
to that alone. He never shall, with the smallest colour of rea- 

5 The Prince Of Orange was at that time living in England. He had been 
Stadtholder in 1794, when the French, having already kindled and blown up 
their revolutionary iires throughout the country, invaded Holland with large 
forces, and turned every thing topsy-turvy there. The Prince was of the same 
illustrious family which furnished the heroic William the Third to England, 
and, along with him, security to the English liberties. 



FRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. 285 

son, accuse me of being the author of a peace with regicide. 
But that is high matter, and ought not to be mixed with any 
thing of so little moment as what may belong to me, or even to 
the Duke of Bedford. 6 

I have the honour to be, &c. 

EDMUND BUKKE. 



FRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. 7 

I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we 
heard, in conversation, the language of more than one gentle- 
man at the opening of this contest, "that he was willing to try 
the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed, then to 
vote for peace." As if war was a matter of experiment ! As 
if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic ! As if 
the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous 
spear in her hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette 
to be flirted with ! We ought with reverence to approach that 
tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands coun- 
sel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to 
be entered into without mature deliberation, — not a delibera- 
tion lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliber- 
ation leading to a sure and fixed judgment. When so taken 
up, it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as 
fully and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as 
unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear ; and the coun- 
cils of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always 
sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly. 

In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth, 
for near eighteen years, government spared no pains to satisfy 

6 The whole Russell family retain, to this day, an irrepressible grudge 
against Burke on account of this Letter. One of them calls him "an inspired 
snob." A snobbish saying, — but not the saying of an inspired snob. 

7 Under this heading, I give a portion of the first of three Letters, published 
in 1796, the title in full being as follows : "Three Letters addressed to a Member 
of the Present Parliament, on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Direc- 
tory of France. 1796." In this work the author discusses a great variety of top- 
ics, all in his usual profound, comprehensive, and eloquent manner; and it is 
remarkable that his imagination here appears more sensitive, more opulent, and 
more redundant, than in any of his previous writings. Most of the discussions, 
however, are not particularly suited to the uses of this volume, even if there 
were room for them ; which there is not. Rut the following extract, besides its 
high literary value, is fraught with wise practical teachings, which may well be 
pressed here, and now. 



286 



BURKE. 



the nation, that, though they were to be animated by a desire of 
glory, glory was not their ultimate object ; but that every 
thing dear to them, in religion, in law, in liberty, every thing 
which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the great 
commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart, was then at 
stake. This was to know the true art of gaining the affections 
and confidence of a high-minded people ; this was to under- 
stand human nature. A danger to avert a danger, a present 
inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future and a 
worse calamity, — these are the motives that belong to an ani- 
mal who, in his constitution, is at once adventurous and provi- 
dent, circumspect and daring ; whom his Creator has made, as 
the poet says, "of large discourse, looking before and after." 
But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of fortitude be 
kindled in a people by a war of calculation. It has nothing 
that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity. 
Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to barter 
their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety for the gratification 
of their avarice, the passion which animates them to that sort 
of conflict, like all the short-sighted passions, must see its 
objects distinct and near at hand. The passions of the lower 
order are hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder ; contin- 
gent spoil ; future, long adjourned, uncertain booty ; pillage 
which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may 
not reach to posterity at all,— these, for any length of time, 
will never support a mercenary war. The people are in the 
right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On 
balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of 
sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The 
blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of 
man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our 
God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity ; the 
rest is crime. 

In the war of the Grand Alliance, 8 most of these considera- 
tions voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were 
pressed into the service. The political interest easily went in • 
the track of the natural sentiment. In the reverse course the 
carriage does not follow freely. I am sure the natural feeling 
is a far more predominant ingredient in this war than in that 
of any other that ever was waged by this kingdom. 

If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one 



8 The "Grand Alliance" here referred to was an alliance of Great Britain, 
Austria, and the States-General of Holland, against the union of the French and 
Spanish crowns in the Bourbon family. It was in the war under that alliance 
that Marlborough gained his great victories against Louis the Fourteenth, in 
the early part of the eighteenth century. 



FRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. 287 

head was a just war ; this, which is made to prevent the tearing 
of all crowns from all heads which ought to wear them, and 
with the crowns to smite off the sacred heads themselves, this 
is a just war. 

If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his 
religion was just, a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the 
Sixteenth from imposing their irreligion upon us is just ; a war 
to prevent the operation of a system, which makes life without 
dignity, and death without hope, is a just war. 

If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to na- 
tions was a just ground of war ; a war to preserve national inde- 
pendence, • property, liberty, life, and honour, from certain, 
universal havoc, is a war just, necessary, manly, pious; and we 
are bound to persevere in it by every principle, Divine and 
human, as long as the system which menaces them all, and all 
equally, has - an existence in the world. 

You, who have looked at this matter with as fair and impar- 
tial an eye as can be united with a feeling heart, you will not 
think it a hardy assertion, when I affirm that it were far better 
to be conquered by any other nation than to have this faction 
for a neighbour. Before I felt myself authorized to say this, I 
considered the state of all the countries in Europe, for these last 
three hundred years, which have been obliged to submit to a 
foreign lav/. In most of these I found the condition of the an- 
nexed countries even better, certainly not worse, than the lot 
of those which were the patrimony of the conqueror. They 
wanted some blessings, but they were free from many great 
evils. They were rich and tranquil. Such was Artois, Flan- 
ders, Lorrain, Alsatia, under the old government of France. 
Such was Silesia under the King of Prussia. They, who are to 
live in the vicinity of this new fabric, are to prepare to live in 
perpetual conspiracies and seditions ; and to end, at last, in be- 
ing conquered, if not to her dominion, to her resemblance. But 
when we talk of conquest by other nations, it is only to put a 
case. This is the only power in Europe by which it is possible 
we should be conquered. To live under the continual dread of 
such immeasurable evils is itself a grievous calamity. To live 
without the dread of them is to turn the danger into the disas- 
ter. The iniluence of such a France is equal to a war ; its ex- 
ample is more wasting than a hostile irruption. The hostility 
with any other power is separable and accidental ; this power, 
by the very condition of its existence, by its very essential con- 
stitution, is in a state of hostility with us, and with all civilized 
people. 

A government of the nature of that set up at our very door 
has never been hitherto seen, or even imagined, in Europe. 



288 BURKE. 

What our relation to it will be cannot be judged by other rela- 
tions. It is a serious thing to have connection with a people 
who live only under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institu- 
tions ; and those not perfected, nor supplied, nor explained, by 
any common acknowledged rule of moral science. I remember 
that in one of my last conversations with the late Lord Camden, 
we were struck much in the same manner with the abolition in 
Prance of the law, as a science of methodized and artificial 
equity. France, since her Eevolution, is under the sway of a 
sect whose leaders have deliberately, at one stroke, demolished 
the whole body of that jurisprudence which France had pretty 
nearly in common with other civilized countries. In .that juris- 
prudence were contained the elements and principles of the 
law of nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the law 
they have of course destroyed all seminaries in which jurispru- 
dence was taught, as well as all the corporations established for 
its conservation. I have not heard of any country, whether in 
Europe or Asia, or even in Africa on this side of Mount Atlas, 
which is wholly without some such colleges and such corpora- 
tions, except France. No man, in a public or private concern, 
can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be 
directed ; nor is there to be found a professor in any university, 
or a practitioner in any court, who will hazard an opinion of 
what is or is not law in France, in any case whatever. They 
have not only annulled all their old treaties, but they have re- 
nounced the law of nations, from whence treaties have their 
force. With a fixed design they have outlawed themselves, 
and, to their power, outlawed all other nations. 

Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a 
great politic communion with the Christian world, they have 
constructed their republic on three bases, all fundamentally 
opposite to those on which the communities of Europe are 
built. Its foundation is laid in regicide, in Jacobinism, 9 and in 
atheism ; and it has joined to those principles a body of sys- 
tematic manners, which secures their operation. 

If I am asked how I would be understood in the use of these 
terms, regicide, Jacobinism, atheism, and a system of corre- 
sponding manners, and their establishment, I will tell you : 

I call a commonwealth regicide, which lays it down as a fixed 
lav/ of nature, and a fundamental right of man, that all govern- 

9 The Jacobins were the extreme radical faction i:i the French Revolution, 
and took that name from their place of rendezvous, which was a forsaken mon- 
astery, previously occupied by an order or fraternity of monks called Jacobins. 
The revolutionary Jacobins were at first a political club, who held secret meet 
ings, to concoct measures which were to be forced upon the Legislature. The 
Reign of Terror was their great triumph in political architecture. 



FRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. XSV 

ment, not being a democracy, is an usurpation j 1 that all kings, 
as such, are usurpers ; and for being kings may and ought to be 
put to death, with their wives, families, and adherents. The 
commonwealth which acts uniformly upon those principles, and 
which, after abolishing every festival of religion, chooses the 
most flagrant act of a murderous regicide treason for a feast of 
eternal commemoration, and which forces all her people to 
observe it, — this I call regicide by establishment. 

Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a coun- 
try against its property. When private men form themselves 
into associations for the purpose of destroying the pre-existing 
laws and institutions of their country; when they secure to 
themselves an army, by dividing amongst the people of no prop- 
erty the estates of the ancient and lawful proprietors ; when a 
State recognizes those acts ; when it does not make confiscations 
for crimes, but makes crimes for confiscations ; when it has its 
principal strength, and all its resources, in such a violation of 
property ; when it stands chiefly upon such a violation ; massa- 
cring by judgments, or otherwise, those who make any struggle 
for their old legal government, and their legal, hereditary, or 
acquired possessions, — I call this Jacobinism by establishment. 

I call it atheism by establishment, when any State, as such, shall 
not acknowledge the existence of God as a moral governor of 
the world; when it shall offer to Him no religious or moral wor- 
ship ; when it shall abolish the Christian religion by a regular 
decree ; 2 when jt shall persecute with a cold, unrelenting, steady 
cruelty, by every mode of confiscation, imprisonment, exile, 
and death, all its ministers ; when it shall generally shut up or 
pull down churches ; when the few buildings which remain of 
this kind shall be opened only for the purpose of making a pro- 
fane apotheosis of monsters whose vices and crimes have no 
parallel amongst men, and whom all other men consider as 
objects of general detestation, and the severest animadversion 
of law. When, in the place of that religion of social benevo- 
lence, and of individual self-denial, in mockery of all religion 
they institute impious, blasphemous, indecent theatric rites in 
honour of their vitiated, perverted reason, and erect altars to 
the personification of their own corrupted and bloody republic ; 3 

1 Nothing could "be more solemn than their promulgation of this principle as 
a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition 
of society, into Avbatever country they should enter. — Author's Kote. 

2 In the Fall of 17£3, some of the chiefs publicly gave out their resolution " to 
dethrone the King of Heaven, as well as the monarchs of the Earth." Not long 
alter, the National Convention passed a formal decree, abolishing Christianity, 
and establishing atheism as the State religion. They also proclaimed death to 
"be " an eternal sleep." 

3 On this occasion, a veiled female was brought into the Convention; and 



290 BURKE. 

when schools and seminaries are founded at the public expense, 
to poison mankind, from generation to generation, with the 
horrible maxims of this impiety ; when, wearied out with in- 
cessant martyrdom and the cries of a people hungering and 
thirsting for religion, they permit it only as a tolerated evil, — 
I call this atheism by establishment. 

When to these establishments of regicide, of Jacobinism, and 
of atheism, you add the correspondent system of manners, no 
doubt can be left on the mind of a thinking man concerning 
their determined hostility to the human race. Manners are of 
more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, 
the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and 
now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or 
purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, 
steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we 
breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. 
According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, 
or they totally destroy them. Of this the new French legisla- 
tors were aware: therefore, with the same method, and under 
the same authority, they settled a system of manners the most 
licentious, prostitute, and abandoned, that ever has been known, 
and at the same time the most coarse, rude, savage, and fero- 
cious. Nothing in the Revolution, no, not to a phrase or a 
gesture, not to the fashion of a hat or a shoe, was left to acci- 
dent. All has been the result of design ; all has been matter of 
institution. No mechanical means could be devised, in favour 
of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that has not 
been employed. The noblest passions, the love of glory, the 
love of country, have been debauched into means of its preser- 
vation and its propagation. All sorts of shows and exhibitions, 
calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination, and pervert 
the moral sense, have been contrived. They have sometimes 
brought forth five or six hundred drunken women, calling at the 
bar of the Assembly for the blood of their own children, as be- 
ing royalists or constitutionalists. Sometimes they have got a 
body of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand the 
murder of their sons, boasting that Rome had but one Brutus, 
but that they could show five hundred. There were instances 

one of the chiefs, taking her by the hand, said, "Mortals, cease to tremble be- 
fore the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears have created. Hence- 
forth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its noblest and purest 
image : if you must have idols, sacrifice only to such as this." Then, letting tall 
the veil, he added, "Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, Veil of Reason!" 
At the same time appeared a celebrated beauty of the opera, known in more 
than one character to most of the members. This "goddess of reason" was 
then taken to the cathedral of Notre Dame, placed upon the high altar, and re- 
ceived the adoration of all present. 



FRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. 291 

in which they inverted and retaliated the impiety, and pro- 
duced sons who called for the execution of their parents. The 
foundation of their republic is laid in moral paradoxes. Their 
patriotism is always prodigy. All those instances to be found 
in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit 
at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from 
which affrighted nature recoils, are their chosen, and almost 
sole, examples for the instruction of their youth. 

The whole drift of their institution is contrary to that of the 
wise legislators of all countries, who aimed at improving in- 
stincts into morals, and at grafting the virtues on the stock of 
the natural affections. They, on the contrary, have omitted no 
pains to eradicate every benevolent and noble propensity in 
the minds of men. In their culture it is a rule always to graft 
virtues on vices. They think every thing unworthy of the 
name of public virtue, unless it indicates violence on the pri- 
vate. All their new institutions (and with them every thing is 
new) strike at the root of our social nature. Other legislators, 
knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and conse- 
quently the .first element of all duties, have endeavoured, by 
every art, to make it sacred. The Christian religion, confining 
it to the pairs, and rendering that relation indissoluble, has by 
these two things done more towards the peace, happiness, set- 
tlement, and civilization of the world, than by any other part 
in this whole scheme of Divine Wisdom. The direct contrary 
course has been taken in the synagogue of Antichrist, — I mean 
in that forge and manufactory of all evil, the sect which pre- 
dominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789. Those mon- 
sters employed the same or greater industry to desecrate and 
degrade that state, which other legislators have used to render 
it holy and honourable. By a strange, uncalled-for declara- 
tion, they pronounced that marriage was no better than a 
common civil contract. 4 It was one of their ordinary tricks to 
put their sentiments into the mouths of certain personated 
characters, which they theatrically exhibited at the bar of 
what ought to be a serious Assembly. One of these was 
brought out in the figure of a prostitute, whom they called by 
the affected name of "a mother without being a wife." This 
creature they made to call for a repeal of the incapacities which 
in civilized States are put upon bastards. The prostitutes of 
the Assembly gave to this their puppet the sanction of their 

4 All this repi-esentation, shocking as it is, speaks the simple language of 
actual history. The Convention passed a decree, declaring marriage a civil 
contract merely, binding only during the pleasure of the contracting parties. 
And a celebrated comic actress expressed the public feeling when she called 
marriage " the Sacrament of Adultery." 



292 BURKE. 

greater impudence. In consequence of the principles laid 
down, and the manners authorized, bastards were not long 
after put on the footing of the issue of lawful unions. Proceed- 
ing in the spirit of the first authors of their Constitution, suc- 
ceeding assemblies went the full length of the principle, and 
gave a license to divorce at the mere pleasure of either party, 
and at a month's notice. With them the matrimonial connec- 
tion is brought into so degraded a state of concubinage, that I 
believe none of the wretches in London who keep warehouses 
of infamy would give out one of their victims to private custody 
on so short and insolent a tenure. There was indeed a kind of 
profligate equity in giving to women the same licentious power. 
The reason they assigned was as infamous as the act ; declaring 
that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents 
and of husbands. It is not necessary to observe upon the hor- 
rible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out 
of the guardianship and protection of the other. 

The practice of divorce, though in some countries permitted, 
has been discouraged in all. In the East, polygamy and divorce 
are in discredit ; and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, 
whilst Rome was in its integrity, the few causes allowed for 
divorce amounted in effect to a prohibition. They were only 
three. The arbitrary was totally excluded, and accordingly 
some hundreds of years passed without a single example of 
that kind. When manners were corrupted, the laws were re- 
laxed ; as the latter always follow the former, when they are 
not able to regulate them, or to vanquish them. Of this cir- 
cumstance the legislators of vice and crime were pleased to 
take notice, as an inducement to adopt their regulation ; hold- 
ing out a hope that the permission would as rarely be made 
use of. They knew the contrary to be true ; and they had 
taken good care that the laws should be well seconded by the 
manners. Their law of divorce, like all their laws, had not for 
its object the relief of domestic uneasiness, but the total cor- 
ruption of all morals, the total disconnection of social life. 

It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation of this en- 
couragement to disorder. I have before me the Paris paper, 
correspondent to the usual register of births, marriages, and 
deaths. Divorce, happily, is no regular head of registry 
amongst civilized nations. With the Jacobins it is remark- 
able that divorce is not only a regular head, but it has the post 
of honour. It occupies the first place in the list. In the three 
first months of the year 1793, the number of divorces in that 
city amounted to 5G2. The marriages were 1785 ; so that the 
proportion of divorces to marriages was not much less than one 
to three,— a thing unexampled, I believe, among mankind. I 



FRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. 293 

caused an inquiry to be made at Doctors' Commons concerning 
the number of divorces; and found that all the divorces (which, 
except by special Act of Parliament, are separations, and not 
proper divorces) did not amount in all those courts, and in a 
hundred years, to much more than one-fifth of those that 
passed, in the single city of Paris, in three months. I followed 
up the inquiry relative to that city through several of the sub- 
sequent months until I was tired, and found the proportions 
still the same. Since then I have heard that they have declared 
for a revisal of these laws ; but I know of nothing done. It ap- 
pears as if the contract that renovates the world was under no 
law at all. Prom this we may take our estimate of the havoc 
that has been made through all the relations of life. With the 
Jacobins of Prance, vague intercourse is without reproach ; 
marriage is reduced to the vilest concubinage ; children are 
encouraged to cut the throats of their parents ; mothers are 
taught that tenderness is no part of their character, and, to 
demonstrate their attachment to their party, that they ought to 
make no scruple to rake with their bloody hands in the bowels 
of those who came from their own. 

To all this let us join the practice of ccmnibalism, with which, 
in the proper terms, and with the greatest truth, their several 
factions accuse each other. By cannibalism, I mean their de- 
vouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, some part of the bod- 
ies of those they have murdered ; their drinking the blood of 
their victims, and forcing the victims themselves to drink the 
blood of their kindred slaughtered before their faces. By can- 
nibalism, I mean also to signify all their nameless, unmanly, 
and abominable insults on the bodies of those they slaughter. 

As to those whom they suffer to die a natural death, they do 
not permit them to enjoy the last consolations of mankind, or 
those rights of sepulture which indicate hope, and which mere 
nature has taught to mankind, in all countries, to soothe the 
afflictions and to cover the infirmity of mortal condition. 
They disgrace men in the entry into life, they vitiate and en- 
slave them through the whole course of it, and they deprive 
them of all comfort at the conclusion of their dishonoured and 
depraved existence. Endeavouring to persuade the people that 
they are no better than beasts, the whole body of their institu- 
tion tends to make them beasts of prey, furious and savage. 
For this purpose the active part of them is disciplined into a 
ferocity which has no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined 
not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues, which accompany the 
vices, where the whole are left to grow up together in the rank- 
ness of uncultivated nature. But nothing is left to nature in 
their systems. 



294 BUKKE. 

The same discipline which hardens their hearts relaxes their 
morals. Whilst courts of justice were thrust out by revolution- 
ary tribunals, and silent churches were only the funeral monu- 
ments of departed religion, there were no fewer than nineteen 
or twenty theatres, great and small, most of them kept open at 
the public expense, and all of them crowded every night. 
Among the gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness, 
amidst the yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries 
of despair, the song, the dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon 
laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive 
peace. I have it from good authority, that, under the scaffold 
of judicial murder, and the gaping planks that poured down 
blood on the spectators, the space was hired out for a show of 
dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have made the very 
same remark on reading some of their pieces, which, being writ- 
ten for other purposes, let us into a view of their social life. It 
struck us that the habits of Paris had no resemblance to the 
finished virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though 
not blameless luxury, of the capital of a great empire. Their 
society was more like that of a den of outlaws upon a doubtful 
frontier ; of a lewd tavern for the revels and debauches of ban- 
ditti, assassins, bravoes, smugglers, and their more desperate 
paramours, mixed with bombastic players, the refuse and re- 
jected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted verses 
about virtue, mixed with the licentious and blasphemous songs 
proper to the brutal and hardened course of life belonging to 
that sort of wretches. This system of manners in itself is at 
war with all orderly and moral society, and is in its neighbour- 
hood unsafe. If great bodies of that kind were anywhere es- 
tablished in a bordering territory, we should have a right to 
demand of their governments the suppression of such a nui- 
sance. What are we to do if the government and the whole 
community is of the same description ? Yet that government 
has thought proper to invite ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and 
to listen to the voice of humanity as taught by their example. 

The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles 
obliges us to have recourse to the true ones. In the intercourse 
between nations we are apt to rely too much on the instrumen- 
tal part. We lay too much weight upon the formality of trea- 
ties and compacts. We do not act much more wisely when we 
trust to the interests of men as guarantees of their engage- 
ments. The interests frequently tear to pieces the engagements, 
and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to 
either, is to disregard our own safety, or not to know mankind. 
Men are not tied to one another by papers and seals. They are 
led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by sympa- 



PRANCE AT WAR WITH HUMANITY. 295 

thies. It is with nations as with individuals. Nothing is so 
strong a tie of amity between nation and nation as correspond- 
ence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life. They have 
more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are obli- 
gations written in the heart. They approximate men to men, 
without their knowledge, and sometimes against their inten- 
tions. The secret, unseen, but irrefragable bond of habitual 
intercourse holds them together, even when their perverse and 
litigious nature sets them to equivocate, scuffle, and fight about 
the terms of their written obligations. 

As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence, it is the 
sole means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it 
from the world. They who say otherwise, intending to impose 
upon us, do not impose upon themselves. But it is one of the 
greatest objects of human wisdom to mitigate those evils which 
we are unable to remove. The conformity and analogy of which 
I speak, incapable, like every thing else, of preserving perfect 
trust and tranquillity among men, has a strong tendency to fa- 
cilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of 
the rancour of their quarrels. "With this similitude, peace is 
more of peace, and war is less of war. I will go further. There 
have been periods of time in which communities, apparently in 
peace with each other, have been more perfectly separated 
than, in latter times, many nations in Europe have been in the 
course of long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in 
the similitude throughout Europe of religion, laws, and man- 
ners. At bottom, these are all the same. The writers on pub- 
lic law "have often called, this aggregate of nations a common- 
wealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great State having 
the same basis of general law, with some diversity of provincial 
customs and local establishments. The nations of Europe have 
had the very same Christian religion, agreeing in the funda- 
mental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the sub- 
ordinate doctrines. The whole of the polity and economy of 
every country in Europe has been derived from the same 
sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custu- 
mary, from the feudal institutions, which must be considered as 
an emanation from that custumary ; and the whole has been 
improved and digested into system and discipline by the Roman 
law. From hence arose the several orders, with or without a 
monarch, (which are called states,) in every European country ; 
the strong traces of which, where monarchy predominated, 
were never wholly extinguished or merged into despotism. In 
the few places where monarchy was cast off, the spirit of Euro- 
pean monarchy was still left. Those countries still continued 
countries of states ; that is, of classes, orders, and distinctions 



296 BURKE. 

such as had before subsisted, or nearly so. Indeed, the force 
and form of the institution called states continued in greater 
perfection in those republican communities than under mon- 
archies. From all those sources arose a system of manners and 
of education which was nearly similar in all this quarter of the 
globe ; and which softened, blended, and harmonized the col- 
ours of the whole. There was little difference in the form of 
the universities for the education of their youth, whether with 
regard to faculties, to sciences, or to the more liberal and ele- 
gant kinds of erudition. From this resemblance in the modes 
of intercourse, and in the whole form and fashion of life, no 
citizen of Europe could be altogether an exile in any part of it. 
There was nothing more than a pleasing variety to recreate and 
instruct the mind, to enrich the imagination, and to meliorate 
the heart. When a man travelled or resided for health, pleas- 
ure, business, or necessity, from his own country, he never felt 
himself quite abroad. 

The whole body of this new scheme of manners, in support of 
the new scheme of politics, I consider as a strong and decisive 
proof of determined ambition and systematic hostility. I defy 
the most refining ingenuity to invent any other cause for the 
total departure of the Jacobin republic from every one of the 
ideas and usages, religious, legal, moral, or social, of this civil- 
ized world, and for her tearing herself from its communion with 
such studied violence, but from a formed resolution of keeping 
no terms with that world. It has not been, as has been falsely 
and insidiously represented, that these miscreants had only 
broke with their old government. They made a schism with 
the whole universe, and that schism extended to almost every 
thing great and small. For one, I wish, since it is gone thus far, 
that the breach had been so complete as to make all intercourse 
impracticable; but partly by accident, partly by design, partly 
from the resistance of the matter, enough is left to preserve in- 
tercourse, whilst amity is destroyed or corrupted in its principle. 



FANATICAL ATHEISM. 

In the Kevolution of France two sorts of men were princi- 
pally concerned in giving a character and determination to its 
pursuits, — the philosophers and the politicians. They took dif- 
ferent ways, but they met in the same end. The philosophers 
had one predominant object, which they pursued with a fanati- 
cal fury, that is, the utter extirpation of religion. To that 



FANATICAL ATHEISM. 297 

every question of empire was subordinate. They bad rather 
domineer in a parish of atheists than rule over a Christian 
world. Their temporal ambition was wholly subservient to 
their proselytizing spirit, in which they were not exceeded by 
Mahomet himself. 

They who have made but superficial studies in the natural 
history of the human mind have been taught to look on re- 
ligious opinions as the'only cause of enthusiastic zeal and secta- 
rian propagation. But there is no doctrine whatever, on which 
men can warm, that is not capable of the very same effect. 
The social nature of man impels him to propagate his princi- 
ples, as much as physical impulses urge him to propagate his 
kind. The passions give zeal and vehemence. The under- 
standing bestows design and system. The whole man moves 
under the discipline of his opinions. Religion is among the 
most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When any thing con- 
cerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be 
indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion, hate it. 
The rebels to God perfectly abhor the Author of their being. 
They hate Him "with all their heart, with all their mind, with 
all their soul, and with all their strength." He never presents 
Himself to their thoughts, but to menace and alarm them. 
They cannot strike the Sun out of heaven, but they are able to 
raise a smouldering smoke that obscures him from their own 
eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have 
a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and 
tearing in pieces, His image in man. Let no one judge of them 
by what he has conceived of them when they were not incor- 
porated and had no lead. They were then only passengers in 
a common vehicle. They were then carried along with the 
general motion of religion in the community, and, without 
being aware of it, partook of its influence. In that situation, 
at worst, their nature was left free to counteract their princi- 
ples. They despaired of giving any very general currency to 
their opinions. They considered them as a reserved privilege 
for the chosen few. But when the possibility of dominion, 
lead, and propagation presented itself, and that the ambition, 
which before had so often made them hypocrites, might rather 
gain than lose by a daring avowal of their sentiments, then the 
nature of this infernal spirit, which has "evil for its good," 
appeared in its full perfection. Nothing indeed but the pos- 
session of some power can with any certainty discover Avhat at 
the bottom is the true character of any man. Without reading 
the speeches of Yergniaux, Francais of Nantz, Isnard, and 
some others of that sort, it would not be easy to conceive the 
passion, rancour, and malice of their tongues and hearts. They 



298 BURKE. 

worked themselves up to a perfect frenzy against religion and 
all its professors. They tore the reputation of the clergy to 
pieces by their infuriated declamations and invectives, before 
they lacerated their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical 
atheism left out, we omit the principal feature in the French 
Revolution, and a principal consideration with regard to the 
effects to be expected from a peace with it. 

The other sort of men were the politicians. To them, who 
had little or not at all reflected on the subject, religion was in 
itself no object of love or hatred. They disbelieved it, and 
that was all. Neutral with regard to that object, they took the 
side which in the present state of things might best answer 
their purposes. They soon found that they could not do with- 
out the philosophers ; and the philosophers soon made them 
sensible that the destruction of religion was to supply them 
with means of conquest, first at home, and then abroad. The 
philosophers were the active internal agitators, and supplied 
the spirit and principles: the second gave the practical direction. 
Sometimes the one predominated in the composition, sometimes 
the other. The only difference between them was in the neces- 
sity of concealing the general design for a time, and in their 
dealing with foreign nations ; the fanatics going straight for- 
ward and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of zigzag. 
In the course of events this, among other causes, produced 
fierce and bloody contentions between them. But at the bot- 
tom they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and 
irreligion, and substantially in all the means of promoting 
these ends. — Letters on a Regicide Peace. 



HOW TO DEAL WITH JACOBIN FRANCE. 

Much controversy there has been in Parliament, and not a 
little amongst us out of doors, about the instrumental means of 
this nation towards the maintenance of her dignity and the 
assertion of her rights. On the most elaborate and correct 
detail of facts, the result seems to be, that at no time has the 
wealth and power of Great Britain been so considerable as it is 
at this very perilous moment. We have a vast interest to pre- 
serve, and we possess great means of preserving it: but it is to 
be remembered that the artificer may be encumbered by his 
tools, and that resources may be among impediments. If wealth 
is the obedient and laborious slave of virtue and of public hon- 
our, then wealth is in its place, and has its use : but if this order 



DESOLATION OF THE CARNATIC. 299 

is changed, and honour is to be sacrificed to the conservation of 
riches, riches, which have neither eyes nor hands, nor any thing 
truly vital in them, cannot long survive the being of their vivi- 
fying powers, their legitimate masters, and. their potent pro- 
tectors. If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free : 
if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. We are bought 
by the enemy with the treasure from our own coffers. Too 
great a sense of the value of a subordinate interest may be the 
very source of its danger, as well as the certain ruin of interests 
of a superior order. Often has a man lost his all because he 
would not submit to hazard all in defending it. A display of 
our wealth before robbers is not the way to restrain their bold- 
ness, or to lessen their rapacity. This display is made, I know, 
to persuade the people of England that thereby we shall awe 
the enemy, and improve the terms of our capitulation: it is 
made, not that we should fight with more animation, but that 
we should supplicate with better hopes. We are mistaken. We 
have an enemy to deal with who never regarded our contest as 
a measuring and weighing of purses. He is the Gaul that puts 
his sword into the scale. 5 He is more tempted with our wealth 
as bootv than terrified with it as power. But let us be rich or 
poor, let us be either in what proportion we may, nature is false 
or this is true, that where the essential public force (of which 
money is but a part) is in any degree upon a par in a conflict 
between nations, that State which is resolved to hazard its ex- 
istence rather than to abandon its object must have an infinite 
advantage over that which is resolved to yield rather than to 
carry its resistance beyond a certain point. Humanly speaking, 
that people which bounds its efforts only with its being must 
give the law to that nation which will not push its opposition 
beyond its convenience. — Letters on a Regicide Peace. 



DESOLATION" OF THE CAKNA.TIC. 

The great fortunes made in India, in the beginnings of con- 
quest, naturally excited an emulation in all the parts, and 

5 Alluding to Brennus, the leader of the Gauls, who in the year B. C. 390 
overthrew the Romans terribly in the battle at the Allia, and captured their 
city, all but the Capitol, which was a strong fortress. He then laid siege to the 
Capitol, and, after a siege of six months, agreed to withdraw on the payment 
of a thousand pounds of gold by the Romans. It is said that, while they were 
weighing out the gold, he cast his sword into the other scale, and exacted the 
weight of that in addition. 



300 BUEKE. 

through the whole succession, of the Company's service. But 
in the Company it gave rise to other sentiments. They did not 
find the new channels of acquisition flow with equal riches to 
them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide of private emolu- 
ment was generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They 
began also to fear that the fortune of war might take away what 
the fortune of war had given. Wars were accordingly discour- 
aged by repeated injunctions and menaces ; and, that the ser- 
vants might not be bribed into them by the native princes, they 
were strictly forbidden to take any money whatsoever from 
their hands. But vehement passion is ingenious in resources. 
The Company's servants were not only stimulated, but better 
instructed, by the prohibition. They soon fell upon a contriv- 
ance which answered their purposes far better than the meth- 
ods which were forbidden ; though in this also they violated an 
ancient, but they thought an abrogated, order. They reversed 
their proceedings. Instead of receiving presents, they made 
loans. Instead of carrying on wars in their own name, they 
contrived an authority, at once irresistible and irresponsible, in 
whose name they might ravage at pleasure ; and, being thus 
freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most 
extravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors 
who have been the object of the late bountiful grant from his 
Majesty's Ministers, in order to possess themselves, under the 
name of creditors and assignees, of every country in India as 
fast as it should be conquered, inspired into the mind of the 
Nabob of Arcot (then a dependent on the Company of the hum- 
blest order) a scheme of the most wild and desperate ambition 
that I believe ever was admitted into the thoughts of a man so 
situated. First, they persuaded him to consider himself as a 
principal member in the political system of Europe. In the 
next place, they held out to him, and he readily imbibed, the 
idea of the general empire of Ilindostan. As a preliminary to 
this undertaking, they prevailed on him to propose a tripartite 
division of that vast country: one part to the Company; another 
to the Mahrattas ; and the third to himself. To himself he re- 
served all the southern part of the great peninsula, compre- 
hended under the general name of the Decan. 

On this scheme of their servants, the Company was to appear 
in the Carnatic in no other light than as a contractor for the 
provision of armies, and the hire of mercenaries for his use and 
under his direction. This disposition was to be secured by the 
Nabob's putting himself under the guarantee of France, and, 
by the means of that rival nation, preventing the English for 
ever from assuming an equality, much less a superiority, in the 
Carnatic. In pursuance of this treasonable project, (treason- 



DESOLATION OF THE CARNATIC. 301 

able on the part of the English,) they extinguished the Com- 
pany as a sovereign power in that part of India ; they withdrew 
the Company's garrisons out of all the forts and strong-holds of 
the Carnatic ; they declined to receive the ambassadors from 
foreign Courts, and remitted them to the Nabob of Arcot ; they 
fell upon, and totally destroyed, the oldest ally of the Company, 
the King of Tan j ore, and plundered the country to the amount 
of near five millions sterling ; one after another, in the Nabob's 
name, but with English force, they brought into a miserable 
servitude all the princes and great independent nobility of a 
vast country. In proportion to these treasons and violences, 
which ruined the people, the fund of the Nabob's debt grew 
and flourished. 

Among the victims to this magnificent plan of universal 
plunder, worthy of the heroic avarice of the projectors, you have 
all heard (and he has made himself to be well remembered) of 
an Indian chief called Hyder Ali Khan. This man possessed 
the western, as the Company under the name of the Nabob of 
Arcot does the eastern, division of the Carnatic. It was among 
the leading measures in the design of this cabal, (according to 
their own emphatic language,) to extirpate this Hyder Ali. 
They declared the Nabob of Arcot to be his sovereign, and him- 
self to be a rebel, and publicly invested their instrument with 
the sovereignty of the kingdom of Mysore. But their victim 
was not of the passive kind. They were soon obliged to conclude 
a treaty of peace and close alliance with this rebel, at the gates of 
Madras. Both before and since that treaty, every principle of 
policy pointed out this power as a natural alliance ; and on his 
part it was courted by eve'ry sort of amicable office. But the 
cabinet council of English creditors would not suffer their 
Nabob of Arcot to sign the treaty, nor even to give to a prince, 
at least his equal, the ordinary titles of respect and courtesy. 
Erom that time forward, a continued plot was carried on 
within the divan, black and t white, of the nabob of Arcot, for 
the destruction of Hyder Ali. As to the outward members of 
the double, or rather treble, government of Madras, which had 
signed the treaty, they were always prevented by some over- 
ruling influence (which they do not describe, but which cannot 
be misunderstood) from performing what justice and interest 
combined so evidently to enforce. 

When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men 
who either would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and 
no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies 
of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country 
possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a 
memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy 



302 



BURKE. 



recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole 
Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put 
perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against 
whom the faith which holds the moral elements together was 
no protection. He became at length so confident of his force, so 
collected in his might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his 
dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every 
enemy and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in 
their common detestation against the creditors of the Nabob of 
Arcot, he drew, from every quarter, whatever a savage ferocity 
could add to his new rudiments in the art of destruction ; and, 
compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation 
into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of 
the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were 
idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which 
blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down 
the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic— 
Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, 
no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. 
All the horrors of war before known or heard of were mercy to 
that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, 
consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The misera- 
ble inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were 
slaughtered ; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the 
respect of rank or sacredness of function, fathers torn from 
children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of 
cavalry, and, amidst the goading spears of drivers and the 
trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity, in an 
unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this 
tempest fled to the walled cities. But, escaping from fire, 
sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine. 

The alms of the settlement, in this dreadful exigency, were 
certainly liberal ; and all was done by Charity that private 
charity could do ; but it was a people in beggary ; it was a 
nation which stretched out its hands for food. For months 
together these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and 
luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the al- 
lowance of our austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without 
sedition or disturbance, almost without complaint, perished by 
an hundred a day in the streets of Madras ; every day seventy 
at least laid their bodies in the streets, or on the glacis of Tan- 
jore, and expired of famine in the granary of India. I was going 
to awake your justice towards this unhappy part of our fellow- 
citizens, by bringing before you some of the circumstances of 
this plague of hunger. Of all the calamities which beset and 
waylay the life of man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and 



DESOLATION - OF THE CARKATIC. 303 

is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing 
more than he is : but I find myself unable to manage it with 
decorum: these details are of a species of horror so nauseous 
and disgusting ; they are so degrading to the sufferers and to 
the hearers ; they are so humiliating to human nature itself ; 
that, on better thoughts, I find it more advisable to throw a 
pall over this hideous object, and to leave it to your general 
conceptions. 

For eighteen months, without intermission, this destruction 
raged from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore ; and so 
.completely did these masters in their art, Hyder Ali and his 
more ferocious son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, 
that, when the British armies traversed, as they did, the Car- 
natic for hundreds of miles in all directions, through the whole 
line of their march they did not see one man, not one woman, 
not one child, not one four-footed beast of any description what- 
ever. One dead, uniform silence reigned over the whole region. 
With the inconsiderable exceptions of the narrow vicinage of 
some few forts, I wish to be understood as speaking literally. 

The Carnatic is a country not much inferior in extent to Eng- 
land. Figure to yourself, Mr. Speaker, the land in whose 
representative chair you sit ; figure to yourself the form and 
fashion of your sweet and cheerful country from Thames to 
Trent north and south, and from the Irish to the German Sea 
east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the 
omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend 
your imagination a little further, and then suppose your Minis- 
ters taking a survey of this scene of waste and desolation: Avhat 
would be your thoughts, if you should be informed that they 
were computing how much had been the amount of the excises, 
how much the customs, how much the land and malt tax, in 
order that they might charge (take it in the most favourable 
light) for public service, upon the relics of the satiated ven- 
geance of relentless enemies, the whole of what England had 
yielded in the most exuberant seasons of peace and abundance? 6 
What would you call it? To call it tyranny sublimed into mad- 

6 Rather obscure, perhaps. The meaning seems to be, that the British Min- 
istry took measures for exacting, or extorting, from what had been left by the 
glutted vengeance of enemies, as much revenue as England had yielded in the 
most productive seasons. William Pitt the younger was at that time Prime 
Minister; but the member of the Ministry at whom this great speech was chiefly 
aimed was the Right-Hon. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville, and 
First Lord of the Admiralty, in which office his malversation drew upon him an 
impeachment. He was for holding the revenues of the exhausted country as 
pledged or mortgaged for payment of the Nabob's debts, and also for using the 
imperial authority to enforce that payment, though the debts had been fraudu- 
lently contracted, or fabricated, in favour of private individuals,— individuals 



304 EURKE. 

ness, would be too faint an image ; yet this very madness is the 
principle upon which the Ministers at your right hand have pro- 
ceeded in their estimate of the revenues of the Carnatic, when 
they were providing, not supply for the establishments of its 
protection, but rewards for the authors of its ruin. 

The Carnatic is not by the bounty of [Nature a fertile soil. 
The general size of its cattle is proof enough that it is much 
otherwise. It is some clays since I moved that a curious and 
interesting map, kept in the India House, should be laid before 
you. The India House is not yet in readiness to send it; I 
have therefore brought down my own copy, and there it lies for 
the use of any gentleman who may think such a matter worthy 
of his attention. It is indeed a noble map, and of noble things ; 
but it is decisive against the golden dreams and sanguine spec- 
ulations of avarice run mad. In addition to what you know 
must be the case in every part of the world, (the necessity of a 
previous provision of habitation, seed, stock, capital,) that map 
will show you that the uses of the influences of heaven itself are 
in that country a work of art. The Carnatic is refreshed by few 
or no living brooks or running streams, and it has rain only at a 
season ; but its product of rice exacts the use of water subject 
to perpetual command. This is the national bank of the Car- 
natic, on which it must have a perpetual credit, or it perishes 
irretrievably. For that reason, in the happier times of India, a 
number, almost incredible, of reservoirs have been made in 
chosen places throughout the whole country : they are formed 
for the greater part of mounds of earth and stones, with sluices 
of solid masonry ; the whole constructed with admirable skill 
and labour, and maintained at a mighty charge. In the terri- 
tory contained in that map alone, I have been at the trouble of 
reckoning the reservoirs, and they amount to upwards of eleven 
hundred, from the extent of two or three acres to five miles in 
circuit. From these reservoirs currents are occasionally drawn 
over the fields, and these water-courses again call for a consid- 
erable expense to keep them properly scoured and duly lev- 
elled. Taking the district in that map as a measure, there 
cannot be in the Carnatic and Tan j ore fewer than ten thousand 
of these reservoirs of the larger and middling dimensions, to 
say nothing of those for domestic services and the uses of re- 
ligious purification. These are not the enterprises of your 
power, nor in a style of magnificence suited to the taste of your 
Minister. These are the monuments of real kings, who were 
the fathers of their people ; testators to a posterity which they 

in the employment indeed of the East India Company, hut acting without the 
consent or knowledge of their employers. 



. 



DESOLATION OF THE CARNATIC. 305 



embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built 
by ambition ; but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, 
which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of hap- 
piness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, 
with all the Teachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to ex- 
tend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature, 
and to perpetuate themselves through generations of genera- 
tions, the guardians, the protectors, the nourishers of mankind. 

Long before the late invasion, the persons who are objects of 
the grant of public money now before you had so diverted the 
supply of the pious funds of culture and population, that every- 
where the reservoirs were fallen into a miserable decay. But 
after those domestic enemies had provoked the entry of a cruel 
foreign foe into the country, he did not leave it, until his re- 
venge had completed the destruction begun by their avarice. 
Few, very few indeed, of these magazines of water that are not 
either totally destroyed, or cut through with such gaps as to 
require a serious attention and much cost to reestablish them, 
as the means of present subsistence to the people, and of future 
revenue to the State. 

What, Sir, would a virtuous and enlightened Ministry do on 
the view of the ruins of such works before them,— on the view 
of such a chasm of desolation as that which yawned in the 
midst of those countries to the north and south which still bore 
some vestiges of cultivation? They would have reduced all 
their most necessary establishments ; they would have sus- 
pended the justest payments; they would have employed every 
shilling derived from the producing, to reanimate the powers of 
the unproductive, parts. While they were performing this fun- 
damental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of 
justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of ficti- 
tious creditors, whose crimes were their claims, that they must 
keep an awful distance ; that they must silence their inauspi- 
cious tongues ; that they must hold off their profane, unhal- 
lowed paws from this holy work: they would have proclaimed, 
with a voice that should make itself heard, that on every coun- 
try the first creditor is the plough ; that this original, indefeasi- 
ble claim supersedes every other demand. 

This is what a wise and virtuous Ministry would have done 
and said. This, therefore, is what our Minister could never 
think of saying or doing. A Ministry of another kind would 
have first improved the country, and have thus laid a solid 
foundation for future opulence and future force. But, on this 
grand point of the restoration of the country, there is not one 
syllable to be found in the correspondence of our Ministers, 
from the first to the last : they felt nothing for a land desolated 



306 



BURKE. 



by fire, sword,- and famine; their sympathies took another 
direction : they were touched with pity for bribery, so long* 
tormented with a fruitless itching of its palms ; their bowels 
yearned for usury, that had long missed the harvest of its re- 
turning months ; 7 they felt for peculation, which had been for 
so many years raking in the dust of an empty treasury ; they 
were melted into compassion for rapine and oppression, licking 
their dry, parched, unbloody jaws. These were the objects of 
their solicitude. These were the necessities for which they 
were studious to provide. — Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, 
1785. 



ler 



UNLAWFULNESS OF ARBITRARY POWER. 8 

My Lords, you have now heard the principles on which Mr. 
Hastings governs the part of Asia subjected to the British em- 
pire. You have heard his opinion of the mean and depraved 
state of those who are subject to it. You have heard his lect- 
ure upon arbitrary power, which he states to be the Consti- 
tution of Asia. You hear the application he makes of it ; and 
you hear the practices which he employs to justify it, and who 
the persons were on whose authority he relies, and whose ex- 
ample he professes to follow. In the first place your Lordships 
will be astonished at the audacity with which he speaks of his 
own administration, as if he was reading a speculative lecture 
on the evils attendant upon some vicious system of foreign gov- 
ernment in which he had no sort of concern whatsoever. And 
then, when in this speculative way he has established, or thinks 

7 Interest in India was rated by the month. It appears, from other parts of 
the speech, that the interest on these alleged loans to the Nabob was sometimes 
at the rate of two or three per cent a-month. Perhaps I ought to state that at 
the time in question these loans had reached the sum of several millions ster- 
ling; and that, to pay this enormous, unauthorized, fraudulent, and probably, to 
a great extent, fictitious indebtedness, or at least the exorbitant interest on it, 
Dundas had set himself to the work of providing funds at the public expense: 
as Burke puts it, "A debt of millions, in favour of a set of men whose names, 
with a lew exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and tal- 
ents, or dragged to light by the enormity of their crimes." 

8 This and the pieces which follow it are from Burke's great speeches in the 
arraignment and trial of Warren Hastings. His opening speech occupied four 
days in the delivery; and this passage on arbitrary power is from his speech on 
the second day. — I suppose the reader will of course understand that the House 
of Lords was the court for trying the impeachment, just as the National Senate 
is in like cases with us. Burke was chief Manager for the House of Commons 
in conducting the trial. — The opening speech was begun on Friday the 15th and 
finished on Tuesday the 19th of February, 17S8. 



UNLAWFULNESS OF AEBITRART POWER. 307 

he has, the vices of the government, he conceives he has found 
a sufficient apology for his own crimes. And if he violates the 
most solemn engagements, if he oppresses, extorts, and robs, if 
he imprisons, confiscates, banishes at his sole will and pleasure, 
when we accuse him for his treatment of the people committed 
to him as a sacred trust, his defence is, — "To be robbed, vio- 
lated, oppressed, is their privilege. Let the Constitution of 
their country answer for it. I did not make it for them. Slaves 
I found them, and as slaves I have treated them. I was a 
despotic prince. Despotic governments are jealous, and the 
subjects prone to rebellion. This very proneness of the sub- 
ject to shake off his allegiance exposes him to continual danger 
from his sovereign's jealousy; and this is consequent on the 
political state of Hindostanic governments." He lays it down 
as a rule, that despotism is the genuine constitution of India ; 
that a disposition to rebellion in the subject or dependent 
prince is the necessary effect of this despotism ; and that jeal- 
ousy and its consequences naturally arise on the part of the 
sovereign ; that the government is every thing, and the subject 
nothing; that the great landed men are in a mean and depraved 
state, and subject to many evils. 

Such a state of things, if true, would warrant conclusions di- 
rectly the opposite of those which Mr. Hastings means to draw 
from them, both argumentatively and practically, first, to influ- 
ence his conduct, and then, to bottom his defence of it. 

Perhaps you will imagine that the man who avows these 
principles of arbitrary government, and pleads them as the 
justification of acts which nothing else can justify, is of opinion 
that they are on the whole good for the people over whom they 
are exercised. The very reverse. He mentions them as hor- 
rible things, tending to inflict on the people a thousand evils, 
and to bring on the ruler a continual train of dangers. Yet he 
states that your acquisitions in India will be a detriment in- 
stead of an advantage, unless you can reduce all the religious 
establishments, all the civil institutions, and tenures of land, 
into one uniform mass ; that is, unless you extinguish all the 
laws, rights, and religious principles of the people, and force 
them to an uniformity, and on that uniformity build a system 
of arbitrary power. 

Eut nothing is more false than that despotism is the Consti- 
tution of any country in Asia that we are acquainted with. It 
is certainly not true of any Mahomedan Constitution. But, if 
it were, do your Lordships really think that the nation would 
bear, that any human creature would bear, to hear an English 
governor defend himself on such principles? or, if he can de- 
fend himself on such principles, is it possible to deny the con- 



308 BURKE. 

elusion, that no man in India has a security for any thing, but 
by being totally independent of the British government ? Here 
he has declared his opinion, that he is a despotic prince, that 
he is to use arbitrary power ; and of course all his acts are cov- 
ered by that shield. " / know" says he, " the Constitution of Asia 
only from, its practice." Will your Lordships submit to hear the 
corrupt practices of mankind made the principles of govern- 
ment? No! it will be your pride and glory to teach men in- 
trusted with power, that, in their use of it, they are to conform 
to principles, and not to draw their principles from the corrupt 
practice of any man whatever. Was there ever heard, or could 
it be conceived, that a governor would dare to heap up all the 
evil practices, all the cruelties, oppressions, extortions, corrup- 
tions, briberies, of all the ferocious usurpers, desperate robbers, 
thieves, cheats, and jugglers, that ever had office, from one end 
of Asia to another, and, consolidating all this mass of the 
crimes and absurdities of barbarous domination into one code, 
establish it as the whole duty of an English governor? I 
believe that till this time so audacious a thing was never at- 
tempted by man. 

He have arbitrary power ! My Lords, the East India Com- 
pany have not arbitrary power to give him ; the King has no 
arbitrary power to give him ; your Lordships have not ; nor the 
Commons, nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary 
power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither 
any man can hold nor any man can give. ~No man can lawfully 
govern himself according to his own will ; much less can one 
person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in 
subjection,— all born equally, high and low, governors and gov- 
erned, in subjection to one great, immutable, praexistent law, 
prior to all our devices and prior to all our contrivances, para- 
mount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our 
very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eter- 
nal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir. 

This great law does not arise from our conventions or com- 
pacts; on the contrary, it gives to our conventions and compacts 
all the force and sanction they can have. It does not arise from 
our vain institutions. Every good gift is of God ; all power is 
of God ; and He who has given the power, and from whom 
alone it originates, will never suffer the exercise of it to be prac- 
tised upon any less solid foundation than the power itself. If, 
then, ail dominion of man over man is the effect of the Divine 
disposition, it is bound by the eternal laws of Him that gave it, 
with which no human authority can dispense, — neither he that 
exercises it, nor even those who are subject to it ; and if they 
were mad enough to make an express compact that should 



UNLAWFULNESS OF ARBITRARY POWER. 309 

release their magistrate from Ms duty, and should declare their 
lives, liberties, and properties depended upon, not rules and 
laws, but his mere capricious will, that covenant would be void. 
The acceptor of it has not his authority increased, but he has 
his crime doubled. Therefore, can it be imagined, if this be 
true, that He will suffer this great gift of government, the 
greatest, the best that was ever given by God to mankind, to be 
the plaything and the sport of the feeble will of a man who, by 
a blasphemous, absurd, and petulant usurpation, would place 
his own feeble, contemptible, and ridiculous will in the place of 
the Divine wisdom and justice ? 

The title of conquest makes no difference at all. No conquest 
can give such a right ; for conquest, that is, force, cannot con- 
vert its own injustice into a just title, by which it may rule 
others at its pleasure. By conquest, which is a more immedi- 
ate designation of the hand of God, the conqueror succeeds to 
all the painful duties and subordination to the power of God 
which belonged to the sovereign whom he has displaced, just 
as if he had come in by the positive law of some descent or 
some election. To this at least he is strictly bound: he ought 
to govern them as he governs his own subjects. But every wise 
conqueror has gone much further than he was bound to go. It 
has been his ambition and his policy to reconcile the van- 
quished to his fortune, to show that they had gained by the 
change ; to convert their momentary suffering into a long bene- 
fit, and to draw from the humiliation of his enemies an acces- 
sion to his own glory. This has been so constant a practice, 
that it is to repeat the histories of all politic conquerors in all 
nations and in all times ; and I will not so much distrust your 
Lordships' enlightened and discriminating studies and correct 
memories as to allude to one of them. I will only show you 
that the Court of Directors, under whom he served, has adopted 
that idea ; that they constantly inculcated it to him, and to all 
their servants ; that they run a parallel between their own and 
the native government, and, supposing it to be very evil, did not 
hold it up as an example to be followed, but as an abuse to be 
corrected ; that they never made it a question, whether India 
is to be improved by English law and liberty, or English, law 
and liberty vitiated by Indian corruption. 

No, my Lords, this arbitrary power is not to be had by con- 
quest. Nor can any sovereign have it by succession ; for no 
man can succeed to fraud, rapine, and violence. Neither by 
compact, covenant, nor submission,— for men cannot covenant 
themselves out of their rights and their duties,— nor by any 
other means, can arbitrary power be conveyed to any man. 
Those who give to others such rights perform acts that are void 



310 BUEKE. 

as they are given,— good indeed and valid only as tending to 
subject themselves, and those who act with them, to the Divine 
displeasure ; because morally there can be no such power. 
Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are 
alike criminal ; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to 
the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the 
world. It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken 
off. Nothing but absolute impotence can justify men in not 
resisting it. 

Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a 
magistrate, and I will name property ; name me a power, and 
I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is 
blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that 
any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent of office 
the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate exist? 
To suppose, for power, is an absurdity in idea. Judges are 
guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which 
we are all subject. We may bite our chains if we will, but we 
shall be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is 
born to be governed by law ; and he that will substitute will in 
the place of it is an enemy to God. 

Despotism does not in the smallest degree abrogate, alter, or 
lessen any one relation of life, or weaken the force or obliga- 
tion of any one engagement or contract whatsoever. Despot- 
ism, if it means any thing that is at all defensible, means a 
mode of government bound by no written rules, and coerced by 
no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the State. 
But, if it has no written law, it neither does nor can cancel the 
the primeval, indefeasible, unalterable law of Nature and of na- 
tions ; and if no magistracies control its exertions, those exer- 
tions must derive their limitation and direction either from the 
equity and moderation of the ruler, or from downright revolt on 
the part of the subject, by rebellion divested of all its criminal 
qualities. The moment a sovereign removes the idea of secu- 
rity and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is 
every thing and they nothing ; when he declares that no con- 
tract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then 
declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign ; they are 
no longer subjects. 



CRUELTIES OF DEBI SISTG. 311 



CRUELTIES OF DEBI SIKG. 9 

It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn mod- 
eration from the ill-success of first oppressions : on the con- 
trary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods 
dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their de- 
sires to the want of sufficient vigour. Then they redouble the 
efforts of their impotent cruelty; which producing, as they 
must ever produce, new disappointments, they grow irritated 
against the objects of their rapacity ; and then rage, fury, mal- 
ice, implacable because unprovoked, recruiting and reinforcing 
their avarice, their vices are no longer human. From cruel 
men they are transformed into savage beasts, with no other 
vestiges of reason left but what serve to furnish the inventions 
and refinements of ferocious subtlety, for purposes of which 
beasts are incapable, and at which fiends would blush. 

Debi Sing and his instruments suspected, and in a few cases 
they suspected justly, that the country people had purloined from 
their own estates, and had hidden in secret places in the circum- 
jacent deserts, some small reserve of their own grain, to main- 
tain themselves during the unproductive months of the year, 
and to leave some hope for a future season. But the under- 
tyrants knew that the demands of Mr. Hastings would admit 
no plea for delay, much less for the subtraction of his bribe ; 
and that he would not abate a shilling of it to the wants of the 
whole human race. These hoards, real or supposed, not being 
discovered by menaces and imprisonment, they fell upon the 
last resource, the naked bodies of the people. And here, my 
Lords, began such a scene of cruelties and tortures as I believe 
no history has ever presented to the indignation of the world ; 
— such as I am sure, in the most barbarous ages, no politic 
tyranny, no fanatic persecution, has ever yet exceeded. 

9 The following piece is from the third day of Burke's opening speech. — 
Warren Hastings was for some thirteen years Governor-General of the British 
Empire in India. During his rule the most outrageous frauds, rapines, oppres- 
sions, and cruelties were practised upon the native inhabitants by his suboi'di- 
nates, and with his sanction, or at least his allowance. Debi Sing was a native 
of the country, and was notoriously steeped in all the worst virulence of East- 
ern luxury, profligacy, and rapacity. By the payment, or the promise, of an 
enormous bribe to Hastings, he got himself armed with full authority and power 
to collect the taxes and revenues of certain provinces; that is, to enrich himself 
as much as he possibly could, by whatever means he might choose to employ. 
Those provinces were then turned Over, unreservedly, to his merciless avarice 
and revenge, to be distressed, plundered, and ravaged, at his pleasure. It was 
in pursuance of this scheme that he perpetrated the horrible inhumanities here 
described. 



312 BURKE. 

My Lords, they began by winding cords round the fingers of 
the unhappy freeholders of those provinces, until they clung to 
and were almost incorporated with one another ; and then they 
hammered wedges of iron between them, until, regardless of the 
cries of the sufferers, they had bruised to pieces and for ever 
crippled those poor, honest, innocent, laborious hands, which 
had never been raised to their mouths but with a penurious 
and scanty proportion of the fruits of their own soil : but those 
fruits (denied to the wants of their own children) have furnished 
the investment of our trade with China, and been sent annually 
out, and without recompense, to purchase for us that delicate 
meal with which your Lordships, and all this auditory, and all 
this country, have begun every day for these fifteen years at 
their expense. To those beneficent hands that labour for our 
benefit the return of the British government has been cords 
and hammers and wedges. But there is a place where these 
crippled and disabled hands will act with resistless power. 
What is it that they will not pull down, when they are lifted to 
Heaven against their oppressors? Then what can withstand 
such hands ? Can the power that crushed and destroyed them ? 
Powerful in prayer, let us at least deprecate, and thus en- 
deavour to secure ourselves from, the vengeance which these 
mashed and disabled hands may pull down upon us. My 
Lords, it is an awful consideration ! let us think of it. 

But, to pursue this melancholy but necessary detail. I am 
next to open to your Lordships, that the most substantial and 
leading yeomen, the responsible farmers, the parochial magis- 
trates and chiefs of villages, were tied two and two by the 
legs together ; and their tormentors, throwing them with their 
heads downwards, over a bar, beat them on the soles of the feet 
with rattans, until the nails fell from the toes ; and then attack- 
ing them at their heads, as they hung downward, as before at 
their feet, they beat them with sticks and other instruments of 
blind fury, until the blood gushed out at their eyes, mouths, 
and noses. Not thinking that the ordinary whips and cudgels, 
even so administered, were sufficient, to others (and often also 
to the same who had suffered as I have stated) they applied, in- 
stead of rattan and bamboo, whips made of the branches of 
the bale-tree, — a tree full of sharp and strong thorns, which 
tear the skin and lacerate the flesh far worse than ordinary 
scourges. For others, exploring with a searching and inquisi- 
tive malice, stimulated by an insatiate rapacity, all the devious 
paths of Nature for whatever is most unfriendly to man, they 
made rods of a plant highly caustic and poisonous, called 
Jjcchettea, every wound of which festers and gangrenes, adds 
double and treble to the present torture, leaves a crust of lep- 



CRUELTIES OF DEBI SING. 313 

rous sores upon the body, and often ends in the destruction of 
life itself. At night, these poor innocent sufferers, these mar- 
tyrs of avarice and extortion, were brought into dungeons; and, 
in the season when nature takes refuge in insensibility from 
all the miseries and cares which wait on life, they were three 
times scourged, and made to reckon the watches of the night by 
periods and intervals of torment. They were then led out, in 
the severe depth of Winter, which there at certain seasons 
would be severe to any, to the Indians is most severe and al- 
most intolerable,— they were led out before break of day, and, 
stiff and sore as they were with the bruises and wounds of the 
night, were plunged into water ; and, whilst their jaws clung 
together with the cold, and their bodies were rendered infi- 
nitely more sensible, the blows and stripes were renewed upon 
their backs ; and then, delivering them over to soldiers, they 
were sent into their farms and villages to discover where the 
few hanclfuls of grain might be found concealed, or to extract 
some loan from the remnants of compassion and courage not 
subdued in those who had reason to fear that their own turn of 
torment would be next, and that their very humanity, being 
taken as a proof of their wealth, would subject them (as it did 
in many cases subject them) to the same inhuman tortures. 
After this circuit of the day through their plundered and ru- 
ined villages, they were remanded at night to the same prison, 
whipped, as before, at their return to the dungeon, and at morn- 
ing v/hipped at their leaving it, and then sent, as before, to pur- 
chase, by begging in the day, the reiteration of the torture in 
the night. Days of menace, insult, and extortion, nights of 
bolts, fetters, and flagellation, succeeded to each other in the 
same round, and for a long time made up all the vicissitudes of 
life to those miserable people. 

But there are persons whose fortitude could bear their own 
suffering ; there are men who are hardened by their very pains, 
and the mind, strengthened even by the torments of the body, 
rises with a strong defiance against its oppressor. They were 
assaulted on the side of their sympathy. Children were 
scourged almost to death in the presence of their parents. 
This was not enough. The son and father were bound close 
together, face to face and body to body, and in that situation 
cruelly lashed together, so that the blow which escaped the 
father fell upon the son, and the blow which missed the son 
wound over the back of the parent. The circumstances were 
combined with so subtle a cruelty, that every stroke which did 
not excruciate the sense should wound and lacerate the senti- 
ments and affections of nature. 

On the same principle, and for the same ends, virgins, who 



314 



BURKE. 



had never seen the Sun, were dragged from the inmost sanctu- 
aries of their houses, and in the open court of justice, in the 
very place where security was to be sought against all wrong 
and all violence, (hut where no judge or lawful magistrate had 
long sat, but, in their place, the ruffians and hangmen of War- 
ren Hastings* occupied the bench,) these virgins, vainly invoking 
Heaven and Earth in the presence of their parents, and whilst 
their shrieks were mingled with the indignant cries and groans 
of all the people, publicly were violated by the lowest and 
wickedest of the human race. Wives were torn from the arms 
of their husbands, and suffered the same flagitious wrongs, 
which were indeed hid in the bottoms of the dungeons in which 
their honour and their liberty were buried together. Often 
they were taken out of the refuge of this consoling gloom, 
stripped naked, and thus exposed to the world, and then cruelly 
scourged ; and, in order that cruelty might riot in all the cir- 
cumstances that melt into tenderness the fiercest natures, the 
nipples of their breasts were put between the sharp and elastic 
sides of cleft bamboos. Here in my hand is my authority ; for 
otherwise one would think it incredible. But it did not end there. 
Growing from crime to crime, ripened by cruelty for cruelty, 
these fiends, at length outraging sex, decency, nature, applied 
lighted torches and slow fire — (I cannot proceed for shame and 
horror !)— these infernal furies planted death in the source of 
life ; and where that modesty which, more than reason, distin- 
guishes men from beasts retires from the view, and even shrinks 
from the expression, there they exercised and glutted their 
unnatural, monstrous and nefarious cruelty, — there where the 
reverence of nature and the sanctity of justice dares not to pur- 
sue, nor venture to describe their practices. 1 



1 During the delivery of this speech, the House of Lords was packed to its 
utmost capacity with whatever was most illustrious in the kingdom. It is said 
that, while giving utterance to this appalling description, Burke's eyes were 
literally streaming and his whole frame quivering with emotion; and that the 
vast audience, their feelings having been gradually Avrought up to the climax, 
could not restrain themselves. I quote from Macknight's Life and Times of 
Burke: "The whole assembly were deeply affected. Mrs. Siddons confessed 
that all the illusions of the stage sank into insignificance before the scene she 
then beheld; and the great actress did homage to the great orator. Mrs. Sheri- 
dan fainted. Even the stern Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who was deeply preju- 
diced both against Burke and the cause he advocated, could not keep up his 
sullen hostility, and for the fir^t time in his life a tear was observed to be in his 
eye. But the most wonderful effect was produced on Hastings himself. He 
hated Burke, and had despised him, until he had by stern experience been com- 
pelled to fear him. As he listened to the harrowing recital of crimes which, if 
he had not authorized, he most certainly had not censured, even his callous 
heart seemed to feel the pangs of sorrow and remorse, and for the moment he 
thought himself the most wicked of mankind. The orator at length was over- 



IMPEACHMENT OF HASTINGS. 315 

These, my Lords, were sufferings which we feel all in com- 
mon, in India and in England, by the general sympathy of our 
common nature. But there were in that province (sold to the 
tormentors by Mr. Hastings) things done, which, from the 
peculiar manners of India, were even worse than all I have laid 
before you ; as the dominion of manners and the law of opinion 
contribute more to human happiness and misery than any thing 
in mere sensitive nature can do. 

The women thus treated lost their caste. My Lords, we are 
not here to commend or blame the institutions and prejudices 
of a whole race of people, radicated in them by a long succes- 
sion of ages, on which no reason or argument, on which no 
vicissitudes of things, no mixtures of men, or foreign conquest, 
have been able to make the smallest impression. The aborigi- 
nal Gentoo inhabitants are all dispersed into tribes or castes, — 
each caste born to an invariable rank, rights, and descriptions 
of employment, so that one caste cannot by any means pass 
into another. With the Gentoos, certain impurities or dis- 
graces, though without any guilt of the party, infer loss of 
caste ; and when the highest caste, that of Brahmin, which is 
not only noble, but sacred, is lost, the person who loses it does 
not slide down into one lower, but reputable, — he is wholly 
driven from all honest society. All the relations of life are at 
once dissolved. His parents are no longer his parents ; his wife 
is no longer his wife ; his children, no longer his, are no longer 
to regard him as their father. It is something far worse than 
complete outlawry, complete attainder, and universal excommu- 
nication. It is a pollution even to touch him ; and if he touches 
any of his old caste, they are justified in putting him to death. 
Contagion, leprosy, plague are not so much shunned. No hon- 
est occupation can be followed. He becomes an halicore, if 
(which is rare) he survives that miserable degradation. 



IMPEACHMENT OF HASTINGS. 2 

My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of 
national justice ? Do we want a cause, my Lords ? You have 

come by his own feelings; his tongue seemed to be paralyzed by his emotion; 
while scorn and horror were depicted upon his brow, and the lightning of indig- 
nation flashed from his eye." 

2 This piece makes the conclusion of Burke's opening speech. The speaker 
had held his audience undiminished through the whole four days of his speak- 
ing; and when he came to the close his powerful voice rose and swelled to its 



316 BURKE. 

the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first 
rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. 

Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so 
much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one ? !No, my 
Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent 
from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in 
India to nourish such another delinquent. 

My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you 
the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors: and I believe, 
my Lords, that the Sun, in his beneficent progress round the 
world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, 
separated from a remote people by the material bounds and 
barriers of Nature, united by the bond of a social and moral 
community ; all the Commons of England resenting, as their 
own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the 
people of India. 

Do we want a tribunal ? My Lords, no example of antiq- 
uity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of 
human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My 
Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred 
majesty of the Crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose 
power you exercise. We' see in that invisible authority, what 
we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protect- 
ing justice of his Majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to 
the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England 
wish an heir-apparent of the crown to be. We have here all 
the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty 
and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject, — offer- 
ing a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the 
Crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities 
they touch. My Lords, we have the great hereditary peerage 
here, — those who have their own honour, the honour of their 
ancestors, and of their posterity, to guard, and who will justify, 
as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution 
by which justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we 
have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted them- 
selves by various merits,— by great military services which 

utmost compass, rolling and reverberating through the lofty arches of the 
house, and bowing the hearts of his audience in the deepest solemnity. William 
Windham, a first-rate judge of orator y, and himself no mean orator, who was 
associated with Burke, as Fox and Sheridan also were, in the management 
of the trial, pronounced this peroration " the noblest ever uttered by man." 
The whole speech, indeed, taken all together, is unrivalled in British eloquence, 
perhaps in all eloquence. But the most astonishing feature of the speech is the 
perfect intellectual mastery it displays of the entire subject, both as a whole and 
in all its minutest details, — that subject the largest too ever attempted to be 
handled in any effort of the land. 



IMPEACHMENT OF HASTINGS. 317 

have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the 
setting Sun. We have those who, by various civil merits and 
various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they 
well deserve, and in which they will justify the favour of their 
sovereign, and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and 
make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters that were 
the other day upon a level with them now exalted above them 
in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in 
common with them before. We have persons exalted from the 
practice of the law, from the place in which they administered 
high though subordinate justice, to a seat here, to enlighten 
with their knowledge, and to strengthen with their votes those 
principles which have distinguished the courts in which they 
have presided. 

My Lords, you have here, also, the lights of our religion, — 
you have the Bishops of England. My Lords, you have that 
true image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its 
ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices 
which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institu- 
tions. You have the representatives of that religion which says 
that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institu- 
tion is charity ; a religion which so much hates oppression, 
that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, 
He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in 
sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it 
a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of 
all government, since the Person who was the Master of Nature 
chose to appear Himself in a subordinate situation. These are 
the considerations which influence them, which animate them, 
and will animate them, against all oppression ; knowing that 
He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both 
of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself 
"the servant of all." 

My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the 
constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, 
we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests 
of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with 
confidence, that, ordered by the Commons, 

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and 
misdemeanours. 

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain 
in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has 
betrayed. 

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great 
Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured. 

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose 



318 



BURKE. 



laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose proper- 
ties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and 
desolate. 

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal 
laws of justice which he has violated. 

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he 
has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in 
every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. 



JUSTICE AND KEYESTGE. 3 

We know from history and the records of this House, that a 
Lord Bacon has been before you. Who is there that, upon 
hearing this name, does not instantly recognize every thing of 
genius the most profound, every thing of literature the most 
extensive, every thing of discovery the most penetrating, every 
thing of observation on human life the most distinguishing and 
refined ? All these must be instantly recognized, for they are 
all inseparably associated with the name of Lord Yerulam. 
Yet, when this prodigy was brought before your Lordships by 
the Commons of Great Britain for having permitted his menial 
servant to receive presents, what was his demeanour ? Did he 
require his counsel not "to let down the dignity of his de- 
fence?" No. That Lord Bacon whose least distinction was, 
that he was a peer of England, a Lord High Chancellor, and 
the son of a Lord Keeper, behaved like a man who knew him- 
self, like a man who was conscious of merits of the highest 
kind, but who was at the same time conscious of having fallen 
into guilt. The House of Commons did not spare him. They 
brought him to your bar. They found spots in that Sun. And 
what, I again ask, was his behaviour ? That of contrition, that 
of humility, that of repentance, that which belongs to the 
greatest men lapsed and fallen through human infirmity into 
error. He did not hurl defiance at the accusations of his 
country ; he bowed himself before it. Yet, with all his peni- 
tence, he could not escape the pursuit of the House of Com- 
mons, and the inflexible justice of this Court. Your Lordships 



3 Burke's "Speech in General Reply " occupied nine days in the delivery, 
beginning May 23, and ending June 16, 1794, more than six years after the open- 
ing speech. The passage here given is from the first day of the speech in reply. 
To my sense it is one of the nohlest strains of eloquence in the language ; though 
of course not equal to the sublime conclusion of the whole speech, which comes 
next in these selections from Burke. 



JUSTICE AND REVENGE. 319 

fined him forty thousand pounds, notwithstanding all his merits, 
notwithstanding his humility, notwithstanding his contrition, 
notwithstanding the decorum of his behaviour, so well suited 
to a man under the prosecution of the Commons of England 
before the Peers of England. You fined him a sum fully equal 
to one hundred thousand pounds of the present day ; you im- 
prisoned him during the King's pleasure ; and you disqualified 
him for ever from having a seat in this House and any office 
in this kingdom. This is the way in which the Commons 
behaved formerly, and in which your Lordships acted formerly, 
when no culprit at this bar dared to hurl a recriminatory accu- 
sation against his prosecutors, or dared to censure the language 
in which they expressed their indignation at his crimes. 

The Commons of Great Britain, following this example and 
fortified by it, abhor all compromise with guilt either in act or 
in language. They will not disclaim any one word that they 
have spoken, because, my Lords, they have said nothing abu- 
sive or illiberal. We have indeed used, and will again use, 
such expressions as are proper to portray guilt. , After describ- 
ing the magnitude of the crime, we describe the magnitude of 
the criminal. We have declared him to be not only a public 
robber himself, but the head of a system of robbery, the 
captain-general of the gang, the chief under whom a whole 
predatory band was arrayed, disciplined, and paid. In develop- 
ing such a mass of criminality, and in describing a criminal of 
such magnitude as we have now brought before you, we could 
not use lenient epithets without compromising with crime. 
We therefore shall not relax in our pursuit nor in our language. 
!N"o, my Lords, no ! we shall not fail to feel indignation, wher- 
ever our moral nature has taught us to feel it ; nor shall we 
hesitate to speak the language which is dictated by that indig- 
nation. Whenever men are oppressed where they ought to be 
protected, we call it tyranny, and we call the actor a tyrant. 
Whenever goods are taken by violence from the possessor, we 
call it a robbery, and the person who takes it we call a robber. 
Money clandestinely taken from the proprietor we call theft, 
and the person who takes it we call a thief. When a false pa- 
per is made out to obtain money, we call the act a forgery. The 
steward who takes bribes from his master's tenants, and then, 
pretending the money to be his own, lends it to that master and 
takes bonds for it to himself, we consider guilty of a breach of 
trust; and the person who commits such crimes we call a cheat, 
a swindler, and a forger of bonds. All these offences, without 
the least softening, under all these names, we charge upon this 
man. We have so charged in our record; we have so charged in 
our speeches ; and we are sorry that our language does not fur- 



320 



BURKE. 



nish terms of sufficient force and compass to mark the multi- 
tude, the magnitude, and the atrocity of his crimes. 

If it should still be asked why we show sufficient acrimony to 
excite a suspicion of being in any manner influenced by malice 
or a desire of revenge, to this, my Lords, we answer, "Because 
we would be thought to know our duty, and would have all the 
world know how resolutely we are determined to perform it." 
The Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to quarrel with 
the Divine wisdom and goodness, which has moulded up re- 
venge into the frame and constitution of man. He that has 
made us what we are, has made us at once resentful and reason- 
able. Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury ; 
reason tells him that he ought not to be a judge in his own 
cause. From that moment revenge passes from the private to 
the public hand ; but in being transferred it is far from being 
extinguished. My Lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust, to 
be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion, by per- 
sons who, feeling as lie feels, are in a temper to reason better 
than he can reason. Revenge is taken out of the hands of the 
original injured proprietor, lest it should be carried beyond the 
bounds of moderation and justice. But, my Lords, it is in its 
transfer exposed to a danger of an opposite description. The 
delegate of vengeance may not feel the wrong sufficiently ; he 
may be cold and languid in the performance of his sacred duty. 
It is for these reasons that good men are taught to tremble even 
at the first emotions of anger and resentment for their own 
particular wrongs ; but they are likewise taught, if they are 
well taught, to give the loosest possible rein to their resentment 
and indignation, whenever their parents, their friends, their 
country, or their brethren of the common family of mankind 
are injured. Those who have not such feelings, under such cir- 
cumstances, are base and degenerate. These, my Lords, are 
the sentiments of the Commons of Great Britain. 

Lord Bacon has very well said that "revenge is a kind of 
wild justice." It is so ; and without this wild, austere stock 
there would be no justice in the world. But when, by the skil- 
ful hand of morality and wise jurisprudence, a foreign scion, 
but of the very same species, is grafted upon it, its harsh qual- 
ity becomes changed ; it submits to culture, and, laying aside 
its savage nature, it bears fruits and flowers, sweet to the world, 
and not ungrateful even to Heaven itself, to which it elevates 
its exalted head. The fruit of this wild stock is revenge regu- 
lated, but not extinguished,— revenge transferred from the suf- 
fering party to the communion and sympathy of mankind. 
This is the revenge by which we are actuated, and which we 
should be sorry if the false, idle, girlish, novel-like morality of 



JUSTICE AND REVENGE. 321 

the world should extinguish in the breast of us who have a 
great public duty to perform. 

This sympathetic revenge, which is condemned by clamorous 
imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of 
all possible virtues, — a virtue which the uncorrupted judgment 
of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism. To 
give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless 
nights and laborious days, and, what is ten times more irksome 
to an ingenuous mind, to offer one's self to calumny and all its 
herd of hissing tongues and poisoned fangs, in order to free the 
world from fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel oppressors, 
from robbers and tyrants, has, I say, the test of heroic virtue, 
and well deserves such a distinction. The Commons, despair- 
ing to attain the heights of this virtue, never lose sight of it for 
a moment. For seventeen years they have, almost without in- 
termission, pursued, by every sort of inquiry, by legislative and 
by judicial remedy, the cure of this Indian malady, worse ten 
thousand times than the leprosy which our forefathers brought 
from the East. Could they have done this, if they had not 
been actuated by some strong, some vehement, some perennial 
passion, which, burning like vestal fire, chaste and eternal, 
never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining 
the rights of the injured, or in denouncing the crimes of the 
oppressor? 

My Lords, the Managers for the Commons have been actu- 
ated by this passion: they feel its influence at this moment; 
and, so far from softening either their measures or their tone, 
they do here, in the presence of their Creator, of this House, 
and of the world, make this solemn declaration, and nuncupate 
this deliberate vow: That they will ever glow with the most 
determined and inextinguishable animosity against tyranny, 
oppression, and peculation in all, but more particularly as prac- 
tised by this man in India ; that they never will relent, but will 
pursue and prosecute him and it, till they see corrupt pride 
prostrate under the feet of justice. 



APPEAL FOR JUDGMENT UPON" HASTINGS. 

My Lords, in the progress of this impeachment, you have 
heard our charges ; you have heard the prisoner's plea of mer- 
its ; you have heard our observations on them. In the progress 
of this impeachment, you have seen the condition in which Mr. 
Hastings received Benares : you have seen the condition in 



322 



BURKE. 



which Mr. Hastings received the country of the Rohillas ; you 
have seen the condition in which he received the country of 
Oude ; you have seen the condition in which he received the 
provinces of Bengal ; you have seen the condition of the coun- 
try when the native government was succeeded by that of Mr. 
Hastings ; you have seen the happiness and prosperity of all its 
inhabitants, from those of the highest to those of the lowest 
rank. My Lords, you have seen the very reverse of all this 
under the government of Mr. Hastings, — the country itself, all 
its beauty and glory, ending in a jungle for wild beasts. You 
have seen nourishing families reduced to implore that pity 
which the poorest man and the meanest situation might very 
well call for. You have seen whole nations in the mass reduced 
to a condition of the same distress. These things in his govern- 
ment at home. Abroad, scorn, contempt, and derision cast upon 
and covering the British name, war stirred up, and dishonour- 
able treaties of peace made, by the total prostitution of British 
faith. Now take, my Lords, together, all the multiplied delin- 
quencies which we have proved, from the highest degree of 
tyranny to the lowest degree of sharping and cheating, and 
then judge, my Lords, whether the House of Commons could 
rest for one moment, without bringing these matters, which 
have baffled all legislation at various times, before you, to try 
at last what judgment will do. Judgment is what gives force, 
effect, and vigour to laws: laws without judgment are con- 
temptible and ridiculous ; we had better have no laws than laws 
not enforced by judgments and suitable penalties upon delin- 
quents. Revert, my Lords, to all the sentences which have 
heretofore been passed by this High Court ; look at the sen- 
tence passed upon Lord Bacon, look at the sentence passed 
upon Lord Macclesfield ; and then compare the sentences which 
your ancestors have given with the delinquencies which were 
then before them, and you have the measure to be taken in 
your sentence upon the delinquent now before you. Your sen- 
tence, I say, will be measured according to that rule which 
ought to direct the judgment of all courts in like cases, lessen- 
ing it for a lesser offence, and aggravating it for a greater, until 
the measure of justice is completely full. 

My Lords, I have done ; the part of the Commons is con- 
cluded. With a trembling solicitude we consign this product of 
our long, long labours to your charge. Take it! — take it! It is 
a sacred trust. Never before was a cause of such magnitude 
submitted to any human tribunal. 

My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, 
and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the ad- 
vancing generations, between which, as a link in the great chain 



APPEAL FOR JUDGMENT UPON HASTINGS. 323 

of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the 
world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no la- 
bour, that we have been guilty of no prevarication, that we have 
made no compromise with crime, that we have not feared any 
odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried 
on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth, 
with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern cor- 
ruption. This war we have waged for twenty-two years, and 
the conflict has been fought at your Lordships' bar for the last 
seven years. My Lords, twenty-two years is a great space in 
the scale of the life of man ; it is no inconsiderable space in the 
history of a great nation. A business which has so long occu- 
pied the councils and the tribunals of Great Britain cannot pos- 
sibly be huddled over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transi- 
tory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions that 
break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the 
very face of Nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, 
we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it ; the mean- 
est of us will, by means of it, more or less become the concern 
of posterity, — if we are yet to hope for such a thing, in the 
present state of the world, as a recording, retrospective, civil- 
ized posterity: but this is in the hands of the great Disposer of 
events ; it is not ours to settle how it shall be. 

My Lords, your House yet stands, — it stands as a great edi- 
fice ; but let me say that it stands in the midst of ruins, — in the 
midst of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral 
earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. 
My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, 
that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some 
great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which 
defies all mutation,— that which existed before the world, and 
will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice, — that 
justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the 
breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to 
ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after 
this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or accuser before 
the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenour 
of a well-spent life. 

My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your 
Lordships ; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, 
in which we shall not be involved. And if it should so happen 
that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes 
which we have seen ; if it should happen that your Lordships, 
stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, 
should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaf- 
folds and machines of murder upon which great kings and 



324 



BUEKE. 



glorious queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, 
amidst the nobles, amidst the magistrates who supported their 
thrones, may you in those moments, feel that consolation which 
I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dread- 
ful agony ! 

My Lords, there is a consolation, — and a great consolation it 
is! — which often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dig- 
nity. It often happens that the very oppressors and persecu- 
tors themselves are forced to bear testimony in its favour. I 
do not like to go for instances a great way back into antiquity. 
I know very well that length of time operates so as to give an 
air of the fabulous to remote events, which lessens the interest 
and weakens the application of examples. I wish to come 
nearer the present time. Your Lordships know and have 
heard (for which of us has not known and heard ? ) of the Par- 
liament of Paris. The Parliament of Paris had an origin very, 
very similar to that of the great Court before which I stand ; 
the Parliament of Paris continued to have a great resemblance 
to it in its constitution, even to its fall. The Parliament of 
Paris, my Lords, was ; it is gone! It has passed away; it 
has vanished like a dream! It fell, pierced by the sword of 
the Comte de Mirabeau. And yet I will say that that man, at 
the time of his inflicting the death-wound of that Parliament, 
produced at once the shortest and the grandest funeral oration 
that ever was or could be made upon the departure of a great 
court of magistracy. Though he had himself smarted under its 
lash, as every one knows who knows his history, (and he was 
elevated to dreadful notoriety in history,) yet, when he pro- 
nounced the death-sentence upon that Parliament, and inflicted 
the mortal wound, he declared that his motives for doing it 
were merely political, and that their hands were as pure as 
those of justice itself, which they administered. A great and 
glorious exit, my Lords, of a great and glorious body! And 
never was an eulogy pronounced upon a body more deserved. 
They were persons, in nobility of rank, in amplitude of fortune, 
in weight of authority, in depth of learning, inferior to few of 
those that hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that 
they submitted their necks to the axe; but their honour was 
unwounded. Their enemies, the persons who sentenced them 
to death, were lawyers full of subtlety, they were enemies full 
of malice ; yet, lawyers full of subtlety, and enemies full of 
malice, as they were, they did not dare to reproach them with 
having supported the wealthy, the great, and powerful, and of 
having oppressed the weak and feeble, in any of their judg- 
ments, or of having perverted justice, in any one instance 
whatever, through favour, through interest, or cabal. 



APPEAL FOR JUDGMENT UPOK HASTINGS. 325 

My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall ! But if you 
stand,— and stand I trust you will, together with the fortune 
of this ancient monarchy, together with the ancient laws and 
liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom,— may you stand 
as unimpeached in honour as in power! May you stand, not 
as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a 
security for virtue! May you stand long, and long stand the 
terror of tyrants ! May you stand the refuge of afflicted nations ! 
May you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of 
an inviolable justice! — Conclusion of Speech in reply. 



The vigorous and laborious class of life has lately got, from 
the bon ton of the humanity of this day, the name of the labour- 
ing poor. We have heard of many plans for the relief of "the 
labouring poor." This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is 
foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never in- 
noxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is 
used to excite compassion) has not been used for those who can, 
but for those who cannot, labour, — for the sick and infirm, for 
orphan infancy, for languishing and decrepit age : but when we 
affect to pity, as poor, those who must labour or the world can- 
not exist, we are trifling with the condition of mankind. It is 
the common doom of man that he must eat his bread by the 
sweat of his brow, that is, by the sweat of his body, or the sweat 
of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is,— as might 
be expected from the curses of the Father of blessings, — it is 
tempered with many alleviations, many comforts. Every at- 
tempt to fly from it, and to refuse the very terms of our exist- 
ence, becomes much more truly a curse, and heavier pains and 
penalties fall upon those who would elude the tasks which are 
put upon them by the great Master Workman of the world, 
who, in His dealings with His creatures, sympathizes with their 
weakness, and, speaking of a creation wrought by mere will out 
of nothing, speaks of six days of labour and one of rest. I do 
not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous 
in ' his arms, I cannot call such a man poor ; I cannot pity my 
kind as a kind, merely because they are men. This affected pity 
only tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach 
them to seek resources where no resources are to be found, in 
something else than their own industry, and frugality, and so- 
briety. "Whatever may be the intention (which, because I do 
not know, I cannot dispute) of those who would discontent 
mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in the conse- 
quences, as if they were our worst enemies. 



DANIEL. WEBSTER 

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 



Daniel Webster, the great Statesman of America, was born in the 
town of Salisbury, New Hampshire, on the 18th of January, 1782. The 
part of Salisbury in which he first saw the light has since been set off as a 
separate town, with the name of Franklin. His father, Ebenezer Webster, 
served largely, both as a soldier and an officer, in the Revolutionary war, 
and distinguished himself in the battle of Bennington. He was also in the 
service at White Plains, and at West Point when Arnold attempted to sur- 
render that post. He was twice married, and each marriage gave him five 
children, Daniel being the youngest but one of the ten. Ezekiel, the brother 
whom he loved most deeply, was the next before him ; born on the 11th of 
April, 1780. 

During his childhood, Daniel was sickly and delicate, giving no promise 
of the robust and vigorous frame which he had in his manhood. In his 
Autobiography , written for a private friend in 1829, though extending only 
to 1817, he says he does not remember when or by whom he was taught to 
read ; and that he cannot recollect a time when he could not i*ead the Bible. 
His father had no literary education, save what he picked up for himself in 
the course of a straitened and toilsome life; but he had a mind strong and 
healthy by nature, insomuch that he became a sort of intellectual leader in 
the neighbourhood. And he seemed to have no higher aim in life than to 
educate his children to the utmost of his limited ability. The only means 
within his reach were the small town schools, which were kept by indifferent 
teachers, in several neighbourhoods of the town, each a small part of the 
year. To these schools Daniel was sent with the other children. When 
the school was near by, it was easy to attend ; but sometimes he had to go, 
in Winter, two and a half or three miles, still living at home ; at other times, 
Avhen the school was further off, his father boarded him out in a neighbour- 
ing family, that he might still attend ; and something of special pains were 
used for him in this behalf, because " the slenderness and frailty " of his con- 
stitution were not thought likely ever to admit of his pursuing any robust 
occupation. Nothing but reading and writing was taught in these schools ; 
and writing was so irksome to him, that the masters used to tell him they 
feared, after all, his fingers were destined for the plough-tail. 

In his early boyhood, Webster was fond of poetry, and could repeat, from 
memory, the greater part of Watts's Psalms and Hymns, at the age\jpf twelve. 
In his Autobiography, we have the following: "I remember that my father 
brought home from some of the lower towns Pope's Essay on Man, pub- 
lished in a sort of pamphlet. I took it, and very soon could repeat it, from 
beginning to end. We had so few books, that to read them once or twice 
was nothing. We thought they were all to be got by heart." lie also 
tells us that, till his fourteenth or fifteenth year, he read what he could 
get to read, went to school when he could ; and, when not at school, was a 
farmer's youngest boy, not good for much, for want of health and strength, 
but was expected to do something. Up to that time, he had no hope of any 
education beyond what the village school could afford. But in May, 179G, 
his father placed him in PhillipsAcadcmv at Exeter. I quote again from 

S2G - - 






SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 327 

his Autobiography : " I believe I made tolerable progress in most branches 
which I attended to, while in this school ; but there was one thing I could 
not do : I could not make a declamation. Many a piece did I commit to 
memory, and recite and rehearse, in my own room, over and over again ; 
yet, when the day came, when the school collected to hear declamations, 
when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could 
not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors frowned, sometimes 
they smiled. When the occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter 
tears of mortification." 

He remained at Exeter only nine months. In February, 1797, his father 
placed him with the Rev. Samuel Wood, the minister of the adjoining town 
of Boscawen ; and Avhile on the way thither first disclosed to him his pur- 
pose of sending him to college. " The very idea," says he, " thrilled my 
whole frame. I remember that I was quite overcome. The thing appeared 
to me so high, the expense and sacrifice it was to cost my father so great, 
I could only press his hand and shed tears. Excellent, excellent parent ! 
I cannot think of him, even now, Avithout turning child again." Among 
the books which he found at Boscawen was Don Quixote. " I began to read 
it," says he, "and it is literally true that I never closed my eyes till I had 
finished it ; nor did I lay it down for five minutes ; so great was the power 
of that extraordinary book on my imagination." 

In August, 1797, Webster entered Dartmouth College. His chief dis- 
tinction while in college was in studies outside the regular course : in writing 
and in debate he excelled all the rest of his class, and was a general favourite 
with the students ; withal, he was a fair scholar within the prescribed studies, 
and was very punctual in his attendance on all the exercises. " My college 
life," says he, " was not an idle one. Besides the regular attendance on pre- 
scribed duties and studies, I read something of English history and English 
literature. Perhaps my reading was too miscellaneous. I even paid my 
board for a year by superintending a little weekly newspaper, and making 
selections for it from books of literature, and from the contemporary pub- 
lications. I suppose I sometimes wrote a foolish paragraph myself. While 
in college I delivered two or three occasional addresses, which were published. 
I trust they are forgotten : they were in very bad taste. I had not then 
learned that all true power in Avriting is in the idea, not in the style ; an 
error into Avhich the Ars rhetorica, as it is usually taught, may easily lead 
stronger heads than mine." Among his class-mates Avith Avhom he kept up 
a correspondence during his life, was my OAvn excellent pastor, the Rev. Dr. 
Thomas A. Merrill, of Middlebury, Vermont; AAdio, Avriting in 1853, after 
Webster's death, relates a passage that happily illustrates the poAver of Web- 
ster at that time. It appears that, in his junior year, Webster read a poem 
on a battle between an English and a French man-of-Avar, in which the latter 
was sunk. Dr. Merrill Avrites that it " held the professor and the class in 
apparent amazement. I almost shudder as, fifty-four years after, I seem 
to see the French ship go down, and to hear her cannon continue to roar 
till she is absolutely submerged." 

Webster Avent through the regular four years' course, and graduated in 
August, 1801. His character at that time is described by his biographer, 
Mr. George T. Curtis, as follows : " His faculty for labour Avas something 
prodigious, his memory disciplined by methods not taught him by others, 
and his intellect Avas expanded far beyond his years. He Avas abstemious, 
religious, of the highest sense of honour, and of the most elevated deport- 
ment. His manners Avere genial, his affections Avarm, his conversation Avas 
brilliant and instructive, his temperament cheerful, his gayety OA-erfloAving." 

Nothing like justice can be done to Webster's nobleness of character, 
without some reference to A\mat took place betA\-een him and his brother 
Ezekiel. Their father's plan Avas, that Ezekiel should stay at home and 
carry on the farm, and that Daniel should be educated for one of the learned 



328 WEBSTER. 

professions. But, in his Sophomore year, as Daniel saw the wide gulf that 
was to open between himself and his elder brother, his heart was moved. 
He could not bear to have it so. He thought Ezekiel's talents to be as good 
as his own ; and his heart yearned to have him blest with equal advantages. 
So, after consulting with his brother, he broke the matter to his father, then 
aged, infirm, and embarrassed in his affairs. He would keep school, he 
would get along as he could, he would be more than four years in goiig 
through college, if need Avere, that his brother too might be sent to srndy. 
The result was, that Ezekiel soon went to preparing for college; and he 
entered Dartmouth in March, 1801, just six months before Daniel grad- 
uated. Meanwhile Daniel worked on the small newspaper already men- 
tioned, and paid his board, thus saving so much for his brother : he also 
taught school during the winter vacation, and gave his earnings to the same 
purpose. 

On leaving college in August, 1801, "Webster returned to his father's 
house, and soon began the study of the law with Thomas W. Thompson, 
E>q., his father's neighbour and friend. He had spent four months in this 
study, when, the family getting more straitened than ever, duty and affec- 
tion pressed him to undertake something for their relief. Having been 
offered the charge of an academy in Fryeburg, Maine, he bought a horse 
for $25.00, and, with his saddle-bags stuffed, set out for the place. He en- 
gaged for six months, at the rate of $350.00 a-year. He went to board in 
the family of James Osgood, Esq., registrar of deeds for the county of Ox- 
ford. Rather than copy the deeds himself, Mr. Osgood preferred to pay 
twenty-five cents a-piece for the copying of them; and Webster gladly 
availed himself of the chance, and thus earned enough to pay his board. 
I quote from his Autobiography : " In May, 1802, having a week's vacation, 
I took my quarter's salary, mounted a horse, Went straight over the hills 
to Hanover, and had the pleasure of putting these earnings into my 
brother's hands for his college expenses. Having enjoyed this high pleas- 
ure, I hied me back again to my school and my copying of deeds." There 
began his friendship with the Rev. Dr. Samuel Osgood, son of the regis- 
trar, who wrote of him long afterwards as "follows: "He was greatly be- 
loved by all who knew him. He was punctual in his attendance upon 
public worship, and ever opened his school with prayer. I never heard 
him use a profane word, and never saw him lose his temper." 

At the end of the six months, Webster gave up his school, though a 
liberal increase of salary was offered him if he would stay ; the earnest de- 
sire of his father, the advice of other friends, and his own inclination draw- 
ing him back to the law. He resumed his place in Mr. Thompson's office, 
and continued there till March, 1804, applying himself diligently to his 
legal studies, but at the same time keeping up and extending his inter- 
course with the springs of more liberal culture. Poor as he was, and much 
as he craved the speedy returns of productive work, still he could not en- 
tirely withhold himself from those elegant studies which bring in their 
immediate riches to the mind alone. 

Webster now felt a strong desire to finish his studies in Boston. His 
brother Ezekiel, after a hard struggle, had at length found employment as 
teacher of a private school in that city; and he had eight scholars in Latin 
and Greek, whom he would have to dismiss, unless he had an assistant. 
He strongly urged Daniel to come to Boston, assuring him of enough to 
pay his board by teaching an hour and a half a-day. So, in July, 1804, to 
Boston he came. He was so fortunate as to find a place in the office of 
Christopher Gore, a man eminent both in and out of his profession, and 
who afterwards became governor of Massachusetts. It was in this way: 
hearing that Mr Gore wanted a clerk, he got a stranger to introduce him. 
He told his story with a modest but manly air, and was heard with encour- 
aging good-nature. He mentioned' some of his acquaintances in New 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 329 

Hampshire, and among them one who had been Mr. Gore's class-mate. 
When he rose to depart, Mr. Gore spoke to him as follows : " My young 
friend, you look as though you might be trusted. You say you came to 
study, and not to waste time. I will take you at your word. You may 
as well hang up your hat at once; go into the other room; take your book, 
and sit down to reading it, and write at your convenience to New Hamp- 
shire for your letters." 

In August, 1804, Ezekiel was under the necessity of going to Hanover to 
take his degree. During his absence, Daniel took charge of his school. 
Edward Everett was at that time one of the pupils ; and there began the 
life-long friendship of the two men. 

Webster's father had for several years held the office of " side-judge," as 
it was called, in Hillsborough county, a place of considerable influence and 
importance in those days. In 1804, the clerkship in the Court of Common 
Pleas there became vacant, and the place was offered to AVebster, with 
$1500.00 a-}-ear. This was indeed a tempting prize; it offered, both for 
himself and the family, immediate relief and supply, and he had no 
thought but to accept. He laid the matter before Mr. Gore, who earnestly 
advised him to decline. " Go on," said he, " and finish your studies : you 
are poor enough, but there are greater evils than poverty ; live on no man's 
favour ; what bread you do eat, let it be the bread of independence ; pur- 
sue your profession, make yourself useful to your friends, and a little for- 
midable to your enemies, and you have nothing to fear." The result was, 
that AVebster declined the place, to the great disappointment indeed of his 
father, who, however, had by this time grown to have so much faith in 
him, that he soon acquiesced. 

In March, 1805, on motion of Mr. Gore, Webster was admitted to prac- 
tice in the Court of Common Pleas in Boston. He soon returned to his 
native State, and opened an office in the town of Boscawen. There he re- 
mained two years and a half, his practice extending over the three coun- 
ties, Hillsborough, Rockingham, and Grafton, and his income amounting 
to six or seven hundred a-year. Of course his mind outgrew the field. 
So, in the Fall of 1807, he gave up his law business there to Ezekiel, and 
removed to Portsmouth, having been admitted as a counsellor of the Supe- 
rior Court in May preceding. In June, 1808, he was married to Miss 
Grace Fletcher, daughter of the Rev. Elijah Fletcher, of Hopkinton, New 
Hampshire. At the Portsmouth Bar, he came in contact with Jeremiah 
Mason, who Avas his senior by fourteen years, and probably the ablest law- 
yer then in New England. From that time onward, the two men were 
wont to be employed as opposing counsel in the same causes. But they 
had a cordial respect for each other : Mason confessed that he found his 
match in AVebster ; he was just the man to wrestle AVebster's great powers 
forth into full development ; and they grew into a fast friendship which 
ended only with the death of Mason in 1848. 

Up to this time, AVebster, it appears, had not given his mind very much 
to political questions. Ho had learned his politics in the old Federal 
school, AVashington, Hamilton, and Marshall being his chief teachers and 
models. His father, too, clung to the same political faith, as did also Gore, 
Mason, and other of his friends; and, say what we will, the Federalists of 
that day were the purest, wisest, noblest political party this country has 
yet seen. AVebster continued, substantially, in the same creed, held fast 
to the same principles of government, to the end of his career. Hence, in 
part, his profound reverence for our National Constitution; hence, his at- 
tachment, deep as life, to the Union which it compacted. But he was too 
large and too wise a man to be cooped up within any formal lines of pol- 
icy; his mind was too far-sighted and too well-poised not to admit the 
force of circumstances in modifying the application of principles; too 
statesman-like, in short, to sacrifice the spirit of his creed to its letter. 



330 WEBSTER. 

The wars and revolutions in Europe, together with the controversies which 
grew out of them to our own government, now forced his thoughts, in a 
manner, into the channel of political questions. In common with the 
other Federalists, he was utterly opposed to the famous embargo law of 
1807 ; and, as he had a most cordial and righteous hatred of Napoleon and 
his doings, he was, to say the least, very slow to admit the necessity of a 
war with Great Britain in 1812. Howbeit, he was nominated a Represent- 
ative to the Thirteenth Congress, was elected, and took his seat in May, 
1813. Not long after, Mr. Mason was elected to the National Senate. Of 
"Webster's course at Washington, the shortness of this Sketch does not 
allow me to speak in detail ; suffice it to say that he soon became a man of 
decided mark : Congress then abounded in able men, Clay and Calhoun 
being chief among them; and Webster at once took rank with the ablest. 
He continued to represent the Rockingham district till March, 1817. 
Meanwhile he had broken away from Portsmouth, and removed to Boston, 
where he now entered upon a career of great professional distinction : busi- 
ness flowed in upon him, and his income soon rose to twenty thousand 
a-year. While in Congress, he had been admitted to practice in the Su- 
preme Court of the'United States. He had many engagements there, and 
in February, 1819, he made his great argument in the famous Dartmouth 
College case. This set the seal to his fame as an advocate; and thence- 
forth he would have been regarded as a great, a very great lawyer, but that 
he was so much greater as a statesman. 

In 1820, Webster was elected to the State Convention for revising the 
Constitution of Massachusetts, and it is admitted on all hands that he was 
the leading member of that body. Some two years later, Boston insisted 
on having him for her representative in Congress : he was elected accord- 
ingly, and took his seat in December, 1823, and continued to serve in that 
position till he was elected to the Senate, in which body he took his seat 
on the 4th of March, 1827. 

Before his removal to Portsmouth, his father had died ; and before the 
end of 1827 Mrs. Webster died, having borne him five children, two of 
whom had also died before their mother. In April, 1829, death fell sud- 
denly upon his brother Ezekiel in the court-room at Concord, New Hamp- 
shire, while he was addressing the jury. ' In December following, Webster, 
having been held some time in New York by professional engagements, 
was there married to Miss Caroline Le Roy, an intelligent and accom- 
plished lady, who survived him. 

We now approach the time when the country was made to understand 
the full measure of Webster's greatness as a Senator and a statesman. He 
had indeed been all the while steadily advancing in reputation and in- 
fluence, but still the people had not fairly begun to know what a man he 
was. On the 26th of January, 1830, he made his speech in reply to 
Hayne. As it was generally known at Washington that he had the floor 
for that day, the Senate-chamber was crowded to its utmost capacity. 
The Speaker was left alone in the other House of Congress. A great 
many ladies were present, and not an inch of standing-room was unoccu- 
pied. The whole assemblage were held in wonder and astonishment from 
the beginning 1 to the end. Of the speech itself, I can but say that it made 
a deeper impression than any speech ever before delivered on this conti- 
nent. It was printed in all the newspapers; it was circulated in pamphlet 
form ; it was read everywhere ; and it carried all before it wherever it was 
read. In short, it marks a new era in the political education of the Ameri- 
can people. 

Webster's labours in the Senate for several years were very much occu- 
pied with questions touching the currency. The science, or the business, 
of finance had long been a special study with him, and he had made him- 
self a thorough master of that most intricate and difficult branch of states-. 



SHETCH OF HIS LIFE. 331 

manship. His strong, cool, comprehensive intellect was eminently suited 
to the subject; and as a financier he has had no equal, probably no second, 
in this country, with the one exception of Hamilton. General Jackson 
came to the presidency in March, 1829. He was a man of very strong, 
character, but no statesman. With a heart full of patriotic ardour, he 
united a hasty, impetuous, despotic temper; and he was immensely popu- 
lar. Mr. Van Buren soon gained a decided ascendency in his councils: 
a man rather diminutive in stature, and of so much political adroitness, 
that he came to be generally distinguished as "the little magician." For 
some cause or other, the President undertook a grand " experiment" upon 
the financial institutions of the country ; as a part of his scheme he went 
to war against the Bank of the United States; and in carrying on that 
war he hit upon the principle of administering the Constitution as he un- 
derstood it, and not as law, usage, precedent, and judicial decision had set- 
tled its meaning and interpretation. The charter of the bank Avas to 
expire in 1836, and in 1832 Congress passed, by decided majorities, a bill 
renewing its charter for twenty years. The President vetoed the bill ; 
and, as it could not command the requisite two thirds in both Houses, it 
failed to become a law. In the Pall of 1833, he "assumed the responsi- 
bility" of removing the public deposits from the bank, where they had 
been placed by law, and of assigning them to the keeping of such State 
banks as he chose, without waiting for any law on the subject. These two 
measures laid the bank upon its death-bed. The experiment stood upon 
the promise of a better currency than the nation had ever seen : its speedy 
effect was to throw the whole currency and commerce of the country into 
utter confusion and disorder. Business everywhere literally went to 
smash. As time wore on, the experiment proved, in every respect, a most 
disastrous and ignominious failure, spreading ruin and distress wherever 
it planted its foot. All this Webster had foreseen and foretold; but then, 
as afterwards, " his was the wise man's ordinary lot, to prophesy to ears 
that would not hear." 

In March, 1834, the Senate, passed a resolution censuring the removal of 
the deposits. The President visited them with a long Protest against that 
censure. The Protest was bristling with new and startling theories and 
pretensions of Presidential prerogative ; and it drew from Webster one of 
the best speeches he ever made. As the speech is given entire in this vol- 
ume, I need say no more of it here than that Governor Tazewell, of Vir- 
ginia, a very eminent statesman of that day, but differing from Webster in 
most of his political views, was so much delighted with it, that he wrote to 
Mr. Tyler requesting him to thank Webster in his behalf, and adding 
these words : " If it is published in pamphlet form, beg him to send me one. 
I will have it bound in good Russia leather, and leave it as a special leg- 
acy to my children." 

During these years, in Webster's judgment, the Constitution was hardly 
in less danger from executive encroachment than from local nullification ; 
and he was constantly standing in its defence, and dealing his hardest 
blows against its assailants on the one side or on the other. But all this 
while he was training and educating the national mind into right consti- 
tutional views, and at the same time ensouling the people with the right 
patriotic spirit, for maintaining the Constitution through the dreadful 
crisis of secession and civil war. 

Up to the time of the removal aforesaid, the opposition were known as 
the National Republican party. From the alarming strides of executive 
power, they now took the name of " Whigs," and Webster began to be 
talked of for the Presidency. From that time onward, his aspirations no 
doubt looked to that office. Most certainly he was ambitious of the Presi- 
dency, as indeed he had a right to be; but he never did any thing unbe- 
coming a great and good man, to that end. He would not, he could not, 



332 WEBSTER. 

it was not in his nature to eat dirt to the people for their votes ; and the 
people had already reached that point that they could hardly be induced to 
vote for a man who would not eat dirt to them. In 1836, the Whigs nomi- 
nated Mr. Clay. Failing to elect him, the party then got badly smitten 
with the disease of " availability." In the strength of that disease, they 
elected General Harrison in 1840, and General Taylor in 1848; but they 
failed to elect General Scott in 1852, whereupon the party died of that 
disease. 

In 1837, Van Buren being President, the scheme known as the " Sub- 
Treasury" was set on foot. Under Jackson's experiment, nearly all the 
banks in the country, the deposit banks among them, had been compelled 
to suspend specie payment ; and the plan next hit upon was, that the gov- 
ernment should take care only to provide a safe currency for its own use, 
leaving the country to shift for itself, in that matter. The Sub-Treasury 
was born of that idea. Webster made two speeches against it. The sec- 
ond, delivered March 12, 1838, is the most elaborate and instructive of his 
speeches on the currency: nay, more ; it is among the best, if not the very 
best, that he ever made. It is worthy to be a standard text-book with 
every student of finance. Mr. S. Jones Lloyd, afterwards Lord Overstone, 
one of the highest financial authorities in England, being called before a 
committee of the House of Commons to enlighten them in matters of cur- 
rency, produced a copy of the speech, and declared it to be one of the ablest 
and most satisfactory discussions he had ever seen in its kind ; and he 
afterwards spoke of Webster as a master who had instructed him on that 
subject. 

In the Summer of 1836, Webster, with his wife, his daughter Julia, and 
others of his family, made a private visit to England. He was everywhere 
received in all the highest circles of intellect and culture, as no American 
had ever been received there before. He met Wordsworth repeatedly in 
London, and was " delighted with him." Hallam was " extremely struck 
by his appearance, deportment, and conversation." To Carlyle, he was "a 
magnificent specimen" : " as a parliamentary Hercules, one would incline 
to back him at first sight against all the extant Avorld." Mr. John Ken- 
yon travelled with him four days. Writing to Mr. George Ticknor, of 
Boston, in 1853, he observes that this "enabled me to know and to love 
not only the great-brained, but large-hearted, genial man ; and this love I 
have held for him ever since, through good report and evil report; and I 
shall retain this love for him to the day of my own departure." Again re- 
ferring to some of Webster's playful sallies : " Fancy how delightful and how 
attaching I found all this genial bearing from so famous a man ; so affec- 
tionate, so little of a humbug. His greatness sat so easy and calm upon 
him ; he never had occasion to whip himself into a froth." 

General Harrison became President in March, 1841, and took Webster 
into his Cabinet as Secretary of State. On the 5th of April he died, hav- 
ing issued a proclamation summoning Congress to meet in extra session 
on the 31st of May. Of course the Presidential office fell into the hands 
of Mr. Tyler. Congress undertook, as their first care, to rectify the cur- 
rency. As the Whigs had a majority in both Houses, they passed a bill 
chartering a new national bank. The President, to the amazement of 
everybody, vetoed the bill, and the Whigs were not strong enough to pass 
it over the veto. The other members of the Cabinet forthwith resigned. 
Webster held on to his place. He saw how he could do important service 
to his country and to humanity, and his heart was set upon doing it. 
This had reference to the long-vexed question of the north-eastern boun- 
dary, — a standing theme of irritation to the two governments, and more 
than once on the eve of flaming out in a destructive war. The British 
Ministry sent Lord Ashburton as a special ambassador for the occasion. 
In Ashburton, Webster found a man like-minded with himself; while his 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 333 

perfect candour and fairness, and his benignity and magnanimity of bear- 
ing made Ashburton feel that the honour of his government was just as 
safe in Webster's hands as in his own. Not only that particular question, 
but several others, full of delicacy and of peril, were settled at the same 
time ; and the settlement has given entire satisfaction to the people of both 
nations. The old international sore was thus completely healed ; and 
"Webster achieved one of the greatest triumphs of diplomacy on record. 
Meanwhile, however, a most dreadful tempest of obloquy and calumny 
broke out upon Webster, from a portion of the Whigs, because he stayed 
in the Cabinet, and it raged against him without stint. A large section 
even of the Whigs in Massachusetts joined in this wretched chorus of 
vituperation, as thinking to rail and browbeat him out of his propriety. 
But he had, in an eminent degree, the high quality of civil and political 
courage ; neither fear nor favour could make him budge an inch from his 
clear and conscientious convictions ; and he stood through " the peltings 
of this pitiless storm," with his heart full of grief indeed, but nevertheless 
unflinching in his duty. On the 30th of September, 1842, while the tem- 
pest was in full blast, he made a speech in Faneuil Hall, and, referring to 
his assailants, said, " I am, Gentlemen, something hard to coax, but as to 
being driven, that is out of the question." 

But Webster's greatest service to the country was during the last three 
years of his life. He hated slavery much, but he loved the Union more : 
this was inexpressibly dear to him ; he knew its unspeakable importance 
to the well-being of the American people ; and the thought of its being de- 
stroyed wrung his heart with anguish. He also saw that the controversies 
then raging between the North and the South, unless they could be allayed, 
must soon culminate in secession and civil war. For the prevention, or, 
if this might not be, for the postponement, of such an issue, he felt that 
every danger must be faced, every exertion made, every sacrifice incurred. 
For these reasons, he put forth his whole strength in favour of the Com- 
promise Measures of 1850. He well knew the risk he was running; but, 
in his judgment, the occasion called on him, imperatively, to head the for- 
lorn hope. And so, in the last hope of saving his cause, he deliberately 
staked his all: he himself went down indeed, but the cause was saved. In all 
this, most assuredly, he was right, nobly right, heroically right ; and none 
the less so, that his action was fatal, politically, to himself. The crowning 
success and triumph of his life grew from his great speech of the 7th of 
March, 1850. The Compromise Measures were carried, and the explosion, 
then so imminent, was postponed. Ten years of time were thereby gained. 
It is not too much to say that this gaining of time saved the Union: for 
we may well tremble to think of what, in all probability, would have been 
the result, had the explosion come on in 1851, instead of 1861. And it 
was owing to Webster, far more than to any other one man, yes, more 
than to any other fifty men, that the nation was prepared for the crisis 
when it came. His earnest teachings, warnings, and exhortations, as to 
the value of the Union, and the duty, nay, the necessity, of preserving it 
at all hazards, had sunk deep into the mind of the country. For twenty 
years, this had been the burden of all his public speaking. His words 
were on the lips and in the hearts of the people from Maine to California ; 
and when, upon the bursting of the storm, the people sprang so gloriously 
to the rescue, it was the great soul of Daniel Webster, breathing and beat- 
ing in them, without their knowing it, that brought and held them to the 
work, till secession was overwhelmed by a wide-sweeping torrent of blood 
and fire. The war was all fought out on the lines which Webster had 
marked down ; nay, more ; the decisive battles for the Union were won by 
him, ten years before the war began. Nor did it escape his " large dis- 
course," that the crisis, after all, was but postponed. In his private inter- 
course, he expressed it as his settled conviction, that the trial was bound 



334 WEBSTER. 

to come, sooner or later. Now that war cost the nation not less than five 
hundred thousand lives, and five thousand millions of money. Those who 
foresaw nothing of this cost may be excused for having provoked the con- 
test, as they also may for having scoffed, as they did, at the great man's 
warnings and his fears : but, as Webster had a forecast of it all, he would 
have been utterly inexcusable, both as a statesman and a man, if he had 
not strained every nerve, and staked his all, to avert the dreadful evil. 

On the death of General Taylor, in July, 1850, President Fillmore called 
Webster into his Cabinet as Secretary of State. Though he had long been 
suffering from a chronic catarrh, and though his life was fast ebbing 
away, at the President's earnest solicitations he remained in office till Iris 
death, which occurred at his house in Marshfield on the 24th of October, 
1852. How the dying man met his last hour on Earth, is well shown in 
that, upon beginning to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he grew faint, and called 
out earnestly, " Hold me up ; I do not wish to pray with a fainting voice." 

Webster's vast power of intellect is admitted by all : but it is not so 
generally known that he was as sweet as he was powerful, and nowhere 
more powerful than in his sweetness. When thoroughly aroused in pub- 
lic speech, there was indeed something terrible about him ; his big, dark, 
burning eye seemed to bore a man through and through : but in his social 
hours, when his massive brow and features were lighted up with a charac- 
teristic smile, it was like a gleam of Paradise ; no person who once saw 
that full-souled smile of his could ever forget it. His goodly person, his 
gracious bearing, and his benignant courtesy made him the delight of every 
circle he entered : in the presence of ladies, especially, his great powers 
seemed to robe themselves spontaneously in beauty ; and his attentions 
were so delicate and so respectful, that they could not but be charmed. 

It was my good fortune to see and hear Webster on various occasions, — 
in Faneuil Hall, in the national Senate, in the court-room, and in the ordi- 
nary talk of man with man. In all these he was great, — great in intellect, 
great in character, and in all the proper correspondencies of greatness. 
And I have it from those who knew him well, that intimacy never wore off 
the impression of his greatness : on the contrary, none could get so near 
him, or stay near him so long, but that he still kept growing upon them. 
But he had something better than all this : he was as lovely in disposition 
as he was great in mind : a larger, warmer, manlier heart, a heart more 
alive with tenderness and all the gentle affections, was never lodged in a hu- 
man breast. Of this I could give many telling and touching prooi's from 
his private history, if my space would permit. Scorch me, if you wiil, for 
saying it, but I verily believe there was more of solid goodness of heart in 
one hour of Daniel Webster than in a whole year of any other man whom 
Massachusetts has since had in the national councils. 

Notwithstanding his great abilities as a financier, Webster's own pri- 
vate finances were often much embarrassed. In giving himself up to the 
public service, he cut himself off from a large professional income. He was 
by nature free, generous, and magnificent in his dispositions. His vast 
reputation, the dignity and elegance of his manners, the engaging suavity 
and affability of his conversation, in a word, the powerful magnetism of the 
man, drew a great deal of high company round him, and necessarily made 
his expenses large. Therewithal, he had " a tear for pity, and a hand open 
as day for melting charity"; and his big, kind heart overjoyed to share 
his best with the humblest about him. Nevertheless it has to be conceded 
that he was, I will not say prodigal, but something too lavish, or at least 
too liberal, in his domestic appointments. This was indeed a serious blem- 
ish. To be euro, all the money in the country could not measure the worth 
of his services. Still it would have been better for his peace of mind, and 
would have saved a deal of ugly scandal, if he had kept strictly within the- 
small returns which his great public services brought in to him. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 



SPEECH IK REPLY TO HAYNE. 1 

"When" this debate, Sir, was to be resumed, on Thursday 
morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for 
me to be elsewhere. 2 The honourable member, however, did 
not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a 
shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That 
shot, Sir, which he thus kindly informed us was coming, that 
we might stand out of the way, or prepare ourselves to fall by 
it and die with decency, has now been received. Under all ad- 
vantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which 
preceded it, it has been discharged, and has spent its force. It 
may become me to say no more of its effect than that, if nobody 
is found, after all, either killed or wounded, it is not the first 
time, in the history of human affairs, that the vigour and suc- 
cess of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sounding 
phrase of the manifesto. 

The gentleman, Sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told 
the Senate, with the emphasis of his hand upon his heart, that 
there was something rankling here, of which he wished to rid 
himself by an immediate reply. In this respect, Sir, I have a 

1 Under this heading I give nearly all of what is commonly known as Web- 
ster's "Second Speech on Foot's Resolution," delivered in the National Senate, 
January 26, 1830. Foot was one of the Senators from Connecticut; and his 
resolution had reference only to the disposal of the public lands in the West. 
The Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, whose speech drew forth this great effort, was one 
of the Senators from South Carolina, and was admitted on all hands to be a very 
able and brilliant and eloquent speaker. But his speech, on this occasion, was 
highly discursive, not to say rambling, introducing a large variety of topics, 
and hardly touching upon the special subject-matter of the resolution before the 
Senate. I give the argument of Webster's speech entire, I believe, in all its 
parts, omitting only some amplifications which, though apt and telling at the 
time, would now be rather in the way, besides that they make the speech too 
long for this volume. 

2 Webster had at that time a pressing and important engagement in the Su- 
preme Court, which occupied him so much that he had no thought of sharing in 
this debate till Hayne's speech roused and riveted his mind to the question. 

335 



336 



WEBSTER. 



great advantage over the honourable gentleman. There is 
nothing here, Sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness ; 
neither fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more 
troublesome than either, — the consciousness of having been in 
the wrong. There is nothing either originating here or now re- 
ceived here by the gentleman's shot. Nothing originating here, 
for I had not the slightest feeling of unkindness towards the 
honourable member. Some passages, it is true, had occurred 
since our acquaintance in this body, which I could have wished 
might have been otherwise ; but I had used philosophy and for- 
gotten them. I paid the honourable member the attention of 
listening with respect to his first speech ; and when he sat 
down, though surprised, and I must even say astonished, at 
some of his opinions, nothing was further from my intention 
than to commence any personal warfare. Through the whole 
of the few remarks I made in answer, I avoided, studiously and 
carefully, every thing which I thought possible to be construed 
into disrespect. And, Sir, while there is thus nothing originat- 
ing here, which I have wished at any time, or now wish, to dis- 
charge, I must repeat, also, that nothing has been received here 
which rankles, or in any way gives me annoyance. I will not 
accuse the honourable member of violating the rules of civilized 
war ; I will not say that he poisoned his arrows. But whether 
his shafts were, or were not, dipped in that which would have 
caused rankling if they had reached their destination, there was 
not, as it happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring 
them to their mark. If he wishes now to gather up those shafts, 
he must look for them elsewhere: they will not be found fixed 
and quivering in the object at which they were aimed. 

The honourable member complained that I had slept on his 
speech. I must have slept on it, or not slept at all. The mo- 
ment the honourable member sat down, his friend from Mis- 
souri rose, 3 and, with much honeyed commendation of the 
speech, suggested that the impressions which it had produced 
were too charming and delightful to be disturbed by other senti- 
ments or other sounds, and proposed that the Senate should 
adjourn. Would it have been quite amiable in me, Sir, to in- 
terrupt this excellent good feeling? Must I not have been 
absolutely malicious, if I could have thrust myself forward, to 
destroy sensations thus pleasing ? Was it not much better and 
kinder, both to sleep upon them myself, and to allow others 
also the pleasure of sleeping upon them ? But if it be meant, 
by sleeping upon his speech, that I took time to prepare a reply, 



3 This "friend from Missouri" was Mr. Benton, one of the leaders of what 
was then called the Jackson party, in the Senate. 






SPEECH IN REPLY TO HAYNE. 337 

it is quite a mistake. Owing to other engagements, I could not 
employ even the interval between the adjournment of the Sen- 
ate and its meeting the next morning, in attention to the subject 
of this debate. Nevertheless, Sir, the mere matter of fact is 
undoubtedly true. I did sleep on the gentleman's speech, and 
slept soundly. And I slept equally well on his speech of yester- 
day, to which I am now replying. It is quite possible that in 
this respect, also, I possess some advantage over the honour- 
able member, attributable, doubtless, to a cooler temperament 
on my part ; for, in truth, I slept upon his speeches remarkably 
well. 

But the gentleman inquires why he was made the object of 
such a reply? Why was he singled out? If an attack has been 
made on the East, he, he assures lis, did not begin it : it was 
made by the gentleman from Missouri. Sir, I answered the 
gentleman's speech because I happened to hear it; and be- 
cause, also, I chose to give an answer to that speech which, if 
unanswered, I thought most likely to produce injurious impres- 
sions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original drawer 
of the bill. I found a responsible indorser before me, and it 
was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just 
responsibility, without delay. But, Sir, this interrogatory of 
the honourable member was only introductory to another. He 
proceeded to ask me whether I had turned upon him, in this 
debate, from the consciousness that I should find an overmatch, 
if I ventured on a contest with his friend from Missouri. If, 
Sir, the honourable member, modestice gratia, had chosen thus to 
defer to his friend, and to pay him a compliment, without inten- 
tional disparagement to others, it would have been quite accord- 
ing to the friendly courtesies of debate, and not at all ungrateful 
to my own feelings. I am not one of those, Sir, who esteem 
any tribute of regard, whether light and occasional, or more 
serious and deliberate, which may be bestowed on others, as so 
much unjustly withholden from themselves. Bat the tone and 
manner of the gentleman's question forbid me thus to interpret 
it. I am not at liberty to consider it as nothing more than a 
civility to his friend. It had an air of taunt and disparagement, 
something of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does 
not allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a 
question for me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for 
me to answer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an 
overmatch for myself in debate here. It seems to me, Sir, that 
this is extraordinary language, and an extraordinary tone, for 
the discussions of this body. 

Matches and overmatches! Those terms are more applicable 
elsewhere than here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. 



338 



WEBSTEK. 



Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. 
This is a Senate, a Senate of equals, of men of individual hon- 
our and personal character, and of absolute independence. We 
know no masters, we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall 
for mutual consultation and discussion ; not an arena for the 
exhibition of champions. I offer myself, Sir, as a match for no 
man ; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But 
then, Sir, since the honourable member has put the question in 
a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer ; 
and I tell him that, holding myself to be the humblest of the 
members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from 
Missouri, either alone or when aided by the arm of his friend 
from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing 
whatever opinions I may clioose to espouse, from debating 
whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I 
may see fit to say, on the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered 
as matter of commendation or compliment, I should dissent 
from nothing which the honourable member might say of his 
friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. 
But when put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say 
to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing more likely 
than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal charac- 
ter. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional 
irony, which otherwise, probably, would have been its general 
acceptation. But, Sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual 
quotation and commendation ; if it be supposed that, by casting 
the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part, to one 
the attack, to another the cry of onset ; or if it be thought that, 
by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels 
are to be won here ; if it be imagined, especially, that any, or all 
these things will shake any purpose of mine, I can tell the hon- 
ourable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and 
that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he 
has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this 
occasion, I hope on no occasion, to be betrayed into any loss of 
temper: but if provoked, as I trust I never shall be, into crimi- 
nation and recrimination, the honourable member may perhaps 
find that, in that contest, there will be blows to -take as well as 
blows to give ; that others can state comparisons as significant, 
at least, as his own ; and that his impunity may possibly de- 
mand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may 
possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his 
resources. 

But, Sir, the Coalition! The Coalition! Ay, "the mur- 
dered Coalition!" The gentlemen asks, if I were led or 
frighted into this debate by the spectre of the Coalition. 



SPEECH IK KEPLY TO HAYXE. 339 

""Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition," he exclaims, 
" which haunted the member from Massachusetts ; and which, 
like the ghost of Banquo, would never down ? " " The murdered 
Coalition!" Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the 
late administration, 4 is not original with the honourable member. 
It did not spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an ar- 
gument, or as an embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts 
it, indeed, from a very low origin, and a still lower present con- 
dition. It is one of the thousand calumnies with which the 
press teemed during an excited political canvass. It was a 
charge, of which there was not only no proof or probability, 
but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true. JSo man 
of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it 
was of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition 
through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of 
misleading those who are already far misled, and of further 
fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it 
served in its day, and, in greater or less degree, the end de- 
signed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general 
mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off 
slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further 
mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not 
now, Sir, in the power of the honourable member to give it dig- 
nity or decency, by attempting to elevate it, and to introduce it 
into the Senate. He cannot change it from what it is, an ob- 
ject of general disgust and scorn. On the contrary, the contact, 
if he choose to touch it, is more likely to drag him down, down, 
to the place where it lies itself. 

But, Sir, the honourable member was not, for other reasons, 
entirely happy in his allusion to the story of Banquo's murder 
and Banquo' s ghost. It was not, I think, the friends, but the 

4 "The Coalition!" was one of the partisan outcries raised against the ad- 
ministration of Pi*esident John Quincy Adams ; and it was urged with incredi- 
ble violence during the canvass of 1S28, in order to defeat the reelection of Ad- 
ams, and bring in General Jackson. In 1S24, Mr. Clay was a candidate for the 
Presidency along with Adams. As there was then no election by the people, it 
fell to the House of Representatives to elect a President, and Clay's friends, or 
the most of them, voted for Adams, and thus secured a majority of the States in 
his favour. Adams gave the first seat in his cabinet to Clay ; not from any pre- 
vious understanding between them, or between their friends, but because Clay 
was evidently the right man for the place. This appointment was eagerly 
seized upon as inferring a bargain ; and the false accusation of a corrupt coali- 
tion thus gi-ounded probably did a good deal towards defeating the reelection 
of Adams in 1828. Mr. Calhoun was elected Vice-President both in 1824 and in 
1828; and in the latter year he gave all his influence against Adams and in 
favour of Jackson. All through those years, Calhoun carried the politics of 
South Carolina in his pocket, nor was his strength by any means confined to 
that State. 



340 WEBSTER. 

enemies of the murdered Banquo, at whose bidding his spirit 
would not down. The honourable gentleman is fresh in his 
reading of the English classics, and can put me right if I am 
wrong: but, according to my poor recollection, it was at those 
who had begun with caresses and ended with foul and treach- 
erous murder that the gory locks were shaken. The ghost of 
Banquo, like that of Hamlet, was an honest ghost. It dis- 
turbed no innocent man. It knew where its appearance would 
strike terror, and who would cry out, "A ghost!" It made 
itself visible in the right quarter, and compelled the guilty and 
the conscience-smitten, and none others, to start, with, 

"Pr'ythee, see there! behold! look! lo! — 
If I stand here, I saw him ! " 

Their eyeballs were seared (was it not so, Sir?) who had 
thought to shield themselves by concealing their own hand, 
and laying the imputation of the crime on a low and hireling 
agency in wickedness ; who had vainly attempted to stifle the 
workings of their own coward consciences, by ejaculating, 
through Avhite lips and chattering teeth, "Thou canst not say I 
did it !" I have misread the great Poet if those who had no 
way partaken in the deed of the death either found that they 
were, or feared that they should be, pushed from their stools by 
the ghost of the slain, or exclaimed, to a spectre created by 
their own fears and their own remorse, " Avaunt ! and quit our 
sight!" 

There is another particular, Sir, in which the honourable 
member's quick perception of resemblances might, I should 
think, have seen something in the story of Banquo, making it 
not altogether a subject of the most pleasant contemplation. 
Those who murdered Banquo, what did they win by it ? Sub- 
stantial good ? Permanent power? Or disappointment, rather, 
and sore mortification; dust and ashes, — the common fate of 
vaulting ambition overleaping itself? Did not even-handed 
justice ere long commend the poisoned chalice to their own 
lips ? Did they not soon find that for another they had "filed 
their mind ? " that their ambition, though apparently for the 
moment successful, had but put a barren sceptre in their 
grasp? 5 Ay, sir, 

5 The application here intended, though clear enough at the time, is some- 
what obscure to us. Supposing there to have been a coalition, and that coali- 
tion to have been killed, the killing must have been done by the friends of 
Calhoun, among whom Mr. Hayne stood foremost. Of course they who had 
killed the coalition were the ones to be haunted by its ghost; and Webster here 
delicately implies that they hud expected to stand iirst in the counsels of the 



SPEECH 1^" EEPLY TO HAYKE. 341 

" a barren sceptre in their gripe, 
Thence to be wrench 'd by an unlineal hand, 
No son of theirs succeeding." 

Sir, I need pursue the allusion no further. I leave the hon- 
ourable gentleman to run it out at his leisure, and to derive 
from it all the gratification it is calculated td administer. If he 
finds himself pleased with the associations, and prepared to be 
quite satisfied though the parallel should be entirely completed, 
I had almost said I am satisfied also ; but that I shall think of. 
Yes, Sir, I will think o f that. 

In the course of my observations the other day, Mr. Presi- 
dent, I paid a passing tribute of respect to a very worthy man, 
Mr. Dane, of Massachusetts. It so happened that he drew the 
Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwestern 
Territory. A man of so much ability, and so little pretence ; 
of so great a capacity to do good, and so unmixed a disposition 
to do it for its own sake ; a gentleman who had acted an impor- 
tant part, forty years ago, in a measure the influence of which 
is still deeply felt in the very matter which was the subject of 
debate, might, I thought, receive from me a commendatory 
recognition. But the honourable member was inclined to be 
facetious on the subject. He was rather disposed to make it 
matter of ridicule, that I had introduced into the debate the 
name of one Nathan Dane, of whom he assures us he had 
never before heard. Sir, if the honourable member had never 
before heard of Mr. Dane, I am sorry for it. It shows him less 
acquainted with the public men of the country than I had sup- 
posed. Let me tell him, however, that a sneer from him at the 
mention of the name of Mr. Dane is in bad taste. It may well 
be a mark of ambition, Sir, either with the honourable gentle- 
man or myself, to accomplish as much to make our names 
known to advantage, and remembered with gratitude, as Mr. 
Dane has accomplished. But the truth is, Sir, I suspect, that 
Mr. Dane lives a little too far north. He is of Massachusetts, 
and too near the north star to be reached by the honourable 
gentleman's telescope. If his sphere had happened to range 
south of Mason and Dixon's line, he might probably have come 
within the scope of his vision. 

I spoke, Sir, of the Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited 

party in whose behalf the killing was done, and also to hold the succession of 
power. But it was not long in becoming evident that Van Buren, and not Cal- 
houn, had the ascendant iu Jackson's counsels; in fact, matters soon grew to a 
decided rupture between Jackson and Calhoun; and at the time when this 
speech was made it was manifest that Calhoun and his friends were cut off from 
the party succession. 



342 WEBSTER. 

slavery, in all future times, northwest of the Ohio, as a measure 
of great wisdom and foresight, and one which had been 
attended with highly beneficial and permanent consequences. 
I supposed that, on this point, no two gentlemen in the Sen- 
ate could entertain different opinions. But the simple expres- 
sion of this sentiment has led the gentleman not only into a 
laboured defence of slavery, in the abstract, and on principle, 
but also into a warm accusation against me, as having attacked 
the system of domestic slavery now existing in the Southern 
States. For all this, there was not the slightest foundation, 
in any thing said or intimated by me. I did not utter a single 
word which any ingenuity could torture into an attack on the sla- 
very of the South. I only said that it was highly wise and use- 
ful, in legislating for the Northwestern country while it was yet 
a wilderness, to prohibit the introduction of slaves ; and added, 
that I presumed there was no reflecting and intelligent person, 
in the neighbouring State of Kentucky, who would doubt that, 
if the same prohibition had been extended, at the same early 
period, over that commonwealth, her strength and population 
would, at this day, have been far greater than they are. If 
these opinions be thought doubtful, they are nevertheless, I 
trust, neither extraordinary nor disrespectful. They attack 
nobody and menace nobody. And yet, Sir, the gentleman's 
optics have discovered, even in the mere expression of this 
sentiment, what he calls the very spirit of the Missouri ques- 
tion! 6 He represents me as making an onset on the whole 
South, and manifesting a spirit which would interfere with, and 
disturb, their domestic condition! 

Sir, this injustice no otherwise surprises me than as it is com- 
mitted here, and committed without the slightest pretence of 
ground for it. I say it only surprises me as being done here; 
for I know full well that it is, and has been, the settled policy 
of some persons in the South, for years, to represent the people 
of the North as disposed to interfere with them in their own 
exclusive and peculiar concerns. This is a delicate and sensi- 
tive point, in Southern feeling ; and of late years it has always 
been touched, and generally with effect, whenever the object 
has been to unite the whole South against Northern men or 
- Northern measures. This feeling, always carefully kept alive, 
and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or 
reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. It 
moves vast bodies, and gives to them one and the same direc- 

6 This " Missouri question" was upon the admission of Missouri as a slave- 
holding State, in 1S20. The question was agitated a long time with exceeding 
heat and bitterness; the agitation ending at last in what was called "The Mis-, 
souri Compromise." 






SPEECH IN REPLY TO HAYNE. 343 

tion. But it is without adequate cause, and the suspicion 
which exists is wholly groundless. There is not, and never has 
been, a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests 
of the South. Such interference has never been supposed to be 
within the power of government ; nor has it been in any way 
attempted. The slavery of the South has always been regarded 
as a matter of domestic policy, left with the States themselves, 
and with which the federal government had nothing to do. 
Certainly, Sir, I am, and ever have been, of that opinion. The 
gentleman, indeed, argues that slavery, in the abstract, is no 
evil. Most assuredly I need not say I differ with him, altogether 
and most widely, on that point. I regard domestic slavery as 
one of the greatest of evils, both moral and political. But 
whether it be a malady, and whether it be curable, and, if so, 
by what means ; or, on the other hand, whether it be the vulnus 
immedicabile of the social system, I leave it to those whose right 
and duty it is to inquire and to decide. And this I believe, 
Sir, is, and uniformly has been, the sentiment of the North. 

Having had occasion to recur to the Ordinance of 1787, in 
order to defend myself against the inferences which the hon- 
ourable member has chosen to draw from my former observa- 
tions on that subject, I am not willing now entirely to take 
leave of it without another remark. It need hardly be said that 
that paper expresses just sentiments on the great subject of 
civil and religious liberty. Such sentiments were common, and 
abound in all our State papers of that clay. But this Ordinance 
did that which was not so common, and which is not even now 
universal ; that is, it set forth and declared it a high and bind- 
ing duty of government itself to support schools, and advance 
the means of education, on the plain reason that religion, mo- 
rality, and knowledge are necessary to good government, and to 
the happiness of mankind. One observation further. The im- 
portant provision incorporated into the Constitution of the 
United States, and several of those of the States, and recently 
adopted into the reformed constitution of Virginia, restraining 
legislative power in questions of private right, and from impair- 
ing the obligation of contracts, is first introduced and estab- 
lished, as far as I am informed, as matter of express written 
constitutional law, in this Ordinance of 1787. And I must add, 
also, in regard to the author of the Ordinance, who has not had 
the happiness to attract the gentleman's notice heretofore, nor 
to avoid his sarcasm now, that he was chairman of that select 
committee of the old Congress whose report first expressed the 
strong sense of that body, that the old Confederation was not- 
adequate to the exigencies of the country, and recommending 



344 WEBSTER. 

to the States to send delegates to the convention which formed 
the present Constitution. 

But the honourable member has now found out that this gen- 
tleman, "Mr. Dane, was a member of the Hartford Convention. 7 
However uninformed the honourable member may be of charac- 
ters and occurrences at the North, it would seem that he has at 
his elbow, on this occasion, some high-minded and lofty spirit, 
some magnanimous and true-hearted monitor, possessing the 
means of local knowledge, and ready to supply the honourable 
member with every thing, down even to forgotten and moth- 
eaten two-penny pamphlets, which may be used to the disad- 
vantage of his own country. But, as to the Hartford Conven- 
tion, Sir, allow me to say, that the proceedings of that body 
seem now to be less read and studied in New England than 
further south. They appear to be looked to, not in New Eng- 
land, but elsewhere, for the purpose of seeing how far they 
may serve as a precedent. But they will not answer the pur- 
pose ; they are quite too tame. The latitude in which they 
originated was too cold. Other conventions, of more recent ex- 
istence, have gone a whole bar's length beyond it. The learned 
doctors of Colleton and Abbeville have pushed their commen- 
taries on the Hartford collect so far, that the original text- 
writers are thrown entirely into the shade. I have nothing to 
do, Sir, with the Hartford Convention. Its journal, which the 
gentleman has quoted, I never read. So far as the honourable 
member may discover in its proceedings a spirit in any degree 
resembling that which was avowed and justified in those other 
conventions to which I have alluded, or so far as those pro^ 
ceedings can be shown to be disloyal to the Constitution, or 
tending to disunion, so far I shall be as ready as any one to be- 
stow on them reprehension and censure. 

Having dwelt long on this Convention, and other occurrences 
of that day, in the hope, probably, (which will not be gratified,) 
that I should leave the course of this debate to follow him at 
length in those excursions, the honourable member returned, 
and attempted another object. He referred to a speech of 
mine in the other House, the same which I had occasion to 
allude to myself, the other day ; and has quoted a passage or 
two from it, with a bold though uneasy and labouring air of 

7 The Hartford Convention was an assembly of delegates from some of the 
New England States, which met at Hartford, Connecticut, in the Winter of 
1S14-15, and sat with closed doors. The members were men of high personal 
character, belonging to the old Federal party, and were strongly opposed to the 
war then pending with Great Britain; which brought upon them the reproach 
of having met for the treasonable purpose of withdrawing the New England 
States from the Union. 



SPEECH m REPLY TO HAYKE. 345 

confidence, as if he had detected in me an inconsistency. Judg- 
ing from the gentleman's manner, a stranger to the course of 
the debate and to the point in discussion would have imagined, 
from so triumphant a tone, that the honourable member was 
about to overwhelm me with a manifest contradiction. Any- 
one who heard him, and who had not heard what I had, in fact, 
previously said, must have thought me routed and discomfited, 
as the gentleman had promised. Sir, a breath blows all this 
triumph away. There is not the slightest difference in the sen- 
timents of my remarks on the two occasions. What I said here 
on "Wednesday is in exact accordance with the opinion ex- 
pressed by me in the other House in 1825. Though the gentle- 
man had the metaphysics of Hudibras, though he were able 

" to sever and divide 
A hair 'twixt north and northwest side," 

lie yet could not insert his metaphysical scissors between the 
fair reading of my remarks in 1825, and what I said here last 
week. There is not only no contradiction, no difference, but, in 
truth, too exact a similarity, both in thought and language, to 
be entirely in just taste. I had myself quoted the same speech ; 
had recurred to it, and spoke with it open before me ; and much 
of what I said was little more than a repetition from it. 

I need not repeat at large the general topics of the honoura- 
ble gentleman's speech. When he said yesterday that he did 
not attack the Eastern States, he certainly must have forgotten, 
not only particular remarks, but the whole drift and tenour of 
his speech ; unless he means, by not attacking, that he did not 
commence hostilities, but that another had preceded him in 
the attack. He, in the first place, disapproved of the whole 
course of the government, for forty years, in regard to its dis- 
position of the public lands ; and then, turning northward and 
eastward, and fancying he had found a cause for alleged nar- 
rowness and niggardliness in the "accursed policy" of the 
tariff, to which he represented the people of New England as 
wedded, he went on for a full hour with remarks, the whole 
scope of which was to exhibit the results of this policy, in 
feelings and in measures unfavourable to the West. I thought 
his opinions unfounded and erroneous, as to the general course 
of the government, and ventured to reply to them. 

The gentleman had remarked on the analogy of other cases, 
and quoted the conduct of European governments towards 
their own subjects settling on this continent, as in point, to 
show that we had been hard and rigid in selling, when we 
should have given the public lands to settlers without price. 



346 WEBSTER. 

I thought the honourable member had suffered his judgment 
to be betrayed by a false analogy ; that he was struck with an 
appearance of resemblance where there was no real similitude. 
I think so still. The first settlers of North America were 
enterprising spirits, engaged in private adventure, or fleeing 
from tyranny at home. When arrived here, they were for- 
gotten by the mother country, or remembered only to be op- 
pressed. Carried away again by the appearance of analogy, or 
struck with the eloquence of the passage, the honourable 
member yesterday observed that the conduct of government 
towards the Western emigrants, or my representation of it, 
brought to his mind a celebrated speech in the British Parlia- 
ment. It was, Sir, the speech of Colonel Barre. On the ques- 
tion of the Stamp Act, or tea tax, I forget which, Colonel 
Barre had heard a member on the treasury bench argue that 
the people of the United States, being British colonists, planted 
by the maternal care, nourished by the indulgence and pro- 
tected by the arms of England, would not grudge their mite to 
relieve the mother country from the heavy burden under which 
she groaned. The language of Colonel Barre, in reply to this, 
was, "They planted by your care ! Your oppression planted 
them in America. They fled from your tyranny, and grew by 
your neglect of them. So soon as you began to care for them, 
you showed your care by sending persons to spy out their liber- 
ties, misrepresent their character, prey upon them, and eat out 
their substance." 

And how does the honourable gentleman mean to maintain 
that language like this is applicable to the conduct of the gov- 
ernment of the United States towards the Western emigrants, 
or to any representation given by me of that conduct ? Were 
the settlers in the West driven thither by our oppression? 
Have they flourished only by our neglect of them? Has 
the government done nothing but prey upon them, and eat 
out their substance? Sir, this fervid eloquence of the Brit- 
ish speaker, just, when and where it was uttered, and fit to 
remain an exercise for the schools, is not a little out of place, 
when it is brought thence to be applied here to the conduct of 
our own country towards her own citizens. From America to 
England, it may be true ; from Americans to their own govern- 
ment, it would be strange language. Let us leave it, to be 
recited and declaimed by our boys against a foreign nation ; 
not introduce it here, to recite and declaim ourselves against 
our own. 

But I come to the point of the alleged contradiction. In my 
remarks on Wednesday, I contended that we could not give 
away gratuitously all the public- lands ; that we held them in 



SPEECH 1^ REPLY TO HAYNE. 347 

trust; that the government had solemnly pledged itself to 
dispose of them as a common fund for the common benefit, and 
to sell and settle them as its discretion should dictate. Now, 
Sir, what contraclictioij does the gentleman find to this senti- 
ment in the speech of 1825? He quotes me as having then said 
that we ought not to hug these lands as a very great treasure. 
Very well, Sir, supposing me to be accurately reported in that 
expression, what is the contradiction? I have not now said 
that we should hug these lands as a favourite source of pecu- 
niary income. No such thing. It is not my view. What I 
have said, and what I do say, is, that they are a common fund, 
to be disposed of for the common benefit, to be sold at low 
prices for the accommodation of settlers, keeping the object of 
settling the lands as much in view as that of raising money 
from them. This I say now, and this I have always said. Is 
this hugging them as a favourite treasure ? Is there no differ- 
ence between hugging and hoarding this fund, on the one hand, 
as a great treasure, and, on the other, disposing of it at low 
prices, placing the proceeds in the general treasury of the 
Union? My opinion is, that as much is to be made of the 
land as fairly and reasonably may be, selling it all the while at 
such rates as to give the fullest effect to settlement. This is 
not giving it all away to the States, as the gentleman would 
propose ; nor is it hugging the fund closely and tenaciously, as 
a favourite treasure ; but it is, in my judgment, a just and wise 
policy, perfectly according with all the various duties which 
rest on government. So much for my contradiction. And 
what is it? Where is the ground of the gentleman's triumph? 
What inconsistency in word or doctrine has he been able to 
detect? Sir, if this be a sample of that discomfiture with which 
the honourable gentleman threatened me, commend me to the 
word discomfiture for the rest of my life. 

We approach, at length, Sir, to a more important part of the 
honourable gentleman's observations. Since it does not accord 
with my views of justice and policy to give away the public 
lands altogether, as mere matter of gratuity, I am asked by the 
honourable gentleman on what ground it is that I consent to 
vote them away in particular instances. Plow, he hfquires, do 
I reconcile with these professed sentiments my support of meas- 
ures appropriating portions of the lands to particular roads, 
particular canals, particular rivers, and particular institutions 
of education in the West? This leads, Sir, to the real and wide 
difference in political opinion between the honourable gentle- 
man and myself. On my part, I look upon all these objects as 
connected with the common good, fairly embraced in its object 
and its terms: he, on the contrary, deems them all, if good at 






348 WEBSTER. 

all, only local good. This is our difference. The interrogatory 
which he proceeded to put at once explains this difference. 
"What interest," asks he, "has South Carolina in a canal in 
Ohio?" Sir, this very question is full of significance. It de- 
velops the gentleman's whole political system ; and its answer 
expounds mine. Here we differ. I look upon a road over the 
Alleghany, a canal round the falls of the Ohio, or a canal or 
railway from the Atlantic to the Western waters, as being an 
object large and extensive enough to be fairly said to be for the 
common benefit. The gentleman thinks otherwise, and this is 
the key to his construction of the powers of the government. 
He may well ask what interest has South Carolina in a canal in 
Ohio. On his system, it is true, she has no interest. On that 
system, Ohio and Carolina are different governments, and differ- 
ent countries ; connected here, it is true, by some slight and ill- 
defined bond of union, but, in all main respects, separate and 
diverse. On that system, Carolina has no more interest in a 
canal in Ohio than in Mexico. The gentleman therefore only 
follows out his own principles ; he does no more than arrive at 
the natural conclusions of his own doctrines: he only announces 
the true results of that creed which he has adopted himself, and 
would persuade others to adopt, when he thus declares that 
South Carolina has no interest in a public work in Ohio. 

Sir, we narrow-minded people of New England do not reason 
thus. Our notion of things is entirely different. We look upon 
the States, not as separated, but as united. We love to dwell 
on that union, and on the mutual happiness which it has so 
much promoted, and the common renown which it has so greatly 
contributed to acquire. In our contemplation, Carolina and 
Ohio are parts of the same country ; States, united under the 
same general government, having interests common, associated, 
intermingled. In whatever is within the proper sphere of the 
constitutional power of this government, we look upon the 
States as one. We do not impose geographical limits to our 
patriotic feeling or regard ; we do not follow rivers and moun- 
tains, and. lines of latitude, to find boundaries, beyond which 
public improvements do not benefit us. We who come here, as 
agents an*d representatives of these narrow-minded and selfish 
men of JSTew England, consider ourselves as bound to regard 
with an equal eye the good of the whole, in whatever is within 
our powers of legislation. Sir, if a railroad or canal, beginning 
in South Carolina and ending in South Carolina, appeared to rne 
to be of national importance and national magnitude, believing, 
as I do, that the power of government extends to the encour- 
agement of works of that description, if I were to stand up here, 
and ask, What interest has Massachusetts in a railroad in South 



SPEECH IN REPLY TO HATNE. 349 

Carolina? I should not be willing to face my constituents. 
These same narrow-minded men would tell me that they had 
sent me to act for the whole country, and that one who pos- 
sessed too little comprehension, either of intellect or feeling, 
one who was not large enough, both in mind and in heart, to 
embrace the whole, was not fit to be entrusted with the interest 
of any part. 

Sir, I do not desire to enlarge the powers of the government 
by unjustifiable construction, nor to exercise any not within a 
fair interpretation. But when it is believed that a power does 
exist, then it is, in my judgment, to be exercised for the general 
benefit of the whole. So far as respects the exercise of such a 
power, the States are one. It was the very object of the Consti- 
tution to create unity of interests to the extent of the powers of 
the general government. In war and peace we are one ; in 
commerce, one ; because the authority of the general govern- 
ment reaches to war and peace, and to the regulation of com- 
merce. I have never seen any more difficulty in erecting light- 
houses on the lakes than on the ocean ; in improving the har- 
bours of inland seas than if they were within the ebb and flow 
of the tide ; or of removing obstructions in the vast streams of 
the West, more than in any work to facilitate commerce on the 
Atlantic coast. If there be any power for one, there is power 
also for the other ; and they are all and equally for the common 
good of the country. 

There are other objects, apparently more local, or the bene- 
fit of which is less general, towards which, nevertheless, I have 
concurred with others, to give aid by donations of land. It is 
proposed to construct a road in or through one of the new 
States, in which this government possesses large quantities of 
land. Have the United States no right, or, as a great and un- 
taxed proprietor, are they under no obligation to contribute to 
an object thus calculated to promote the common good of all 
the proprietors, themselves included ? And even with respect 
to education, which is the extreme case, let the question be 
considered. In the first place, as we have seen, it was made 
matter of compact with these States, that they should do their 
part to promote education. In the next place, our whole sys- 
tem of land laws proceeds on the idea that education is for the 
common good ; because, in every division, a certain portion is 
uniformly reserved and appropriated for the use of schools. 
And, finally, have not these new States singularly strong 
claims, founded on the ground already stated, that the govern- 
ment is a great untaxed proprietor, in the ownership of the 
soil ? It is a consideration of great importance, that probably 
there is in no part of the country, or of the world, so great call 



350 / WEBSTER. 

for the means of education as in those new States, owing to the 
vast numbers of persons within those ages in which education 
and instruction are usually received, if received at all. This 
is the natural consequence of recency of settlement and rapid 
•increase. The census of these States shows how great a pro- 
portion of the whole population occupies the classes between 
infancy and manhood. These are the wide fields, and here is 
the deep and quick soil for the seeds of knowledge- and virtue ; 
and this is the favoured season, the very spring-time, for sowing 
them. J^et them be disseminated without stint. Let them be 
scattered with a bountiful hand, broadcast. Whatever the gov- 
ernment can fairly do towards these objects, in my opinion, 
oughtto.be done. 

These, Sir, are the grounds, succinctly stated, on which my 
Totes for grants of lands for particular objects rest ; while I 
maintain, at the same time, that it is all a common fund, for the 
common benefit. And reasons like these, I presume, have in- 
fluenced the votes of other gentlemen from New England. 
Those who have a different view of the powers of the govern- 
ment, of course, come to different conclusions, on these, as on 
other questions. I observed, when speaking on this subject be- 
fore, that if we looked to any measure, whether for a road, a 
canal, or any thing else, intended for the improvement of the 
West, it would be found that, if the 3sTew England ayes were 
struck out of the lists of votes, the Southern noes would always 
have rejected the measure. The truth of this has not been 
denied, and cannot be denied. In stating this, I thought it just 
to ascribe it to the constitutional scruples of the South, rather 
than to any other less favourable or less charitable cause. But 
no sooner had I done this, than the honourable gentleman asks 
if I reproach him and his friends with their constitutional scru- 
ples. Sir, I reproach nobody. I stated a fact, and gave the 
most respectful reason for it that occurred to me. The gentler 
man cannot deny the fact ; he may, if lie choose, disclaim the 
reason. It is not long since I had occasion, in presenting a peti- 
tion from his own State, to account for its being intrusted to 
my hands, by saying that the constitutional opinions of the 
gentleman and his worthy colleague prevented them from sup- 
porting it. Sir, did I state this as matter of reproach? Far 
from it. Did I attempt to find any other cause than an honest 
one for these scruples ? Sir, I did not. It did not become me 
to doubt or to insinuate that the gentleman had either changed 
his sentiments, or that he had made up a set of constitutional 
opinions accommodated to any particular combination of politi- 
cal occurrences. Had I done so, I should have felt that, while 
I was entitled to little credit in thus questioning other people's 



SPEECH EN" REPLY TO HAYKE. 351 

motives, I justified the whole world in suspecting my own. 
But how has the gentleman returned this respect for others' 
opinions? His A own candour and justice, how have they been 
exhibited towards the motives of others, while he has been at 
so much pains to maintain, what nobody has disputed, the 
purity of his own ? 

This government, Mr. President, from its origin to the peace 
of 1815, had been too much engrossed with various other im- 
portant concerns to be able to turn its thoughts inward, and 
look to the development of its vast internal resources. In the 
early part of President Washington's administration, it was 
fully occupied with completing its own organization, providing 
for the public debt, defending the frontiers, and maintaining 
domestic peace. Before the termination of that administration, 
the fires of the French Revolution blazed forth, as from a new- 
opened volcano, and the whole breadth of the ocean did not 
secure us from its effects. The smoke and the cinders reached 
us, though not the burning lava. Difficult and agitating ques- 
tions, embarrassing to government, and dividing public opinion, 
sprung out of the new state of our foreign relations, and were 
succeeded by others, and *yet again by others, equally embar- 
rassing, and equally exciting division and discord, through the 
long series of twenty years, till they finally issued in the war 
with England. J)own to the close of that war, no distinct, 
marked, and deliberate attention had been given, or could have 
been given, to the internal condition of the country, its capaci- 
ties of improvement, or the constitutional power of the govern- 
ment in regard to objects connected with such improvement. 

The peace, Mr. President, brought about an entirely new and 
a most interesting state of things: it opened to us other pros- 
pects, and suggested other duties. We ourselves were changed, 
and the whole world was changed. The pacification of Europe, 
after June, 1815, assumed a firm and permanent aspect. The 
nations evidently manifested that they were disposed for peace. 
Some agitation of the waves might be expected, even after the 
storm had subsided, but the tendency was, strongly and rapidly, 
towards settled repose. 

It so happened, Sir, that I was at that time a member of Con- 
gress, and, like others, naturally turned my thoughts to the con- 
templation of the recently-altered condition of the country and 
of the world. It appeared plainly enough to me, as well as to 
wiser and more experienced men, that the policy of the govern- 
ment would naturally take a start in a new direction ; because 
new directions would necessarily be given to the pursuits and 
occupations of the people. We had pushed our commerce far 
and fast, under the advantage of a neutral flag. But there were 



352 WEBSTER. 

now no longer flags either neutral or belligerent. The harvest 
of neutrality had been great, but we had gathered it all. With 
the peace of Europe, it was obvious there would spring up in 
her circle of nations a revived and invigorated spirit of trade, 
and a new activity in all the business and objects of civilized 
life. Hereafter, our commercial gains were to be earned only 
by success in a close and intense competition. Other nations 
would produce for themselves, and carry for themselves, and 
manufacture for themselves, to the full extent of their abilities. 
The crops of our plains would no longer sustain European ar- 
mies, nor our ships longer supply those whom war had rendered 
unable to supply themselves. It was obvious that, under these 
circumstances, the country would begin to survey itself, and to 
estimate its own capacity of improvement. 

And this improvement, how was it to be accomplished, and 
who was to accomplish it? We were ten or twelve millions of 
people, spread over almost half a world. We were more than 
twenty States, some stretching along the same seaboard, some 
along the same line of inland frontier, and others on opposite 
banks of the same vast rivers. Two considerations at once pre- 
sented themselves, in looking at this state of things, with great 
force. One was, that that great branch of improvement which 
consisted in furnishing new facilities of intercourse necessarily 
ran into different States in every leading instance, and would 
benefit the citizens of all such States. No one State therefore, 
in such cases, would assume the whole expense, nor was the 
cooperation ot several States to be expected. Take the instance 
of the Delaware breakwater. It will cost several millions of 
money. Would Pennsylvania alone ever have constructed it? 
Certainly never, while this Union lasts, because it is not for her 
sole benefit. Would Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware 
have united to accomplish it at their joint expense ? Certainly 
not, for the same reason. It could not be done, therefore, but 
by the general government. The same maybe said of the large 
inland undertakings, except that, in them, government, instead 
of bearing the whole expense, cooperates with others who bear 
a part. The other consideration is, that the United States have 
the means. They enjoy the revenues derived from commerce, 
and the States have no abundant and easy sources of public in- 
come. The custom-houses fill the general treasury, while the 
States have scanty resources, except by resort to heavy direct 
taxes. 

Under this view of things, I thought it necessary to settle, at 
least for myself, some definite notions with respect to the pow- 
ers of the government in regard to internal affairs. It may not 
savour too much of self-commendation to remark that, with 



SPEECH 1ST EEPLY TO HAYSTE. 353 

this object, I considered the Constitution, its judicial construc- 
tion, its contemporaneous exposition, and the whole history of 
the legislation of Congress under it ; and I arrived at the con- 
clusion that government had power to accomplish sundry ob- 
jects, or aid in their accomplishment, which are now commonly 
spoken of as Internal Improvements. That conclusion, Sir, 
may have been right, or it may have been wrong. I am not 
about to argue the grounds of it at large. I say only that it was 
adopted and acted on even so early as in 1816. Yes, Mr. Presi- 
dent, I made up my opinion, and determined on my intended 
course of political conduct, on these subjects, in the Fourteenth 
Congress, in 1816. And now, Mr. President, I have further to 
say, that I made up these opinions, and entered on this course 
of political conduct, Teucro duce. a Yes, Sir, I pursued, in all 
this, a South Carolina track on the doctrines of internal im- 
provement. South Carolina, as she was then represented in 
the other House, set forth in 1816 under a fresh and leading 
breeze, and I was among the followers. But if my leader sees 
new lights, and turns a sharp corner, unless I see new lights 
also, I keep straight on in the same path. I repeat, that leading 
gentlemen from South Carolina were first and foremost in be- 
half of the doctrines of internal improvement, when those doc- 
trines came first to be considered and acted upon in Congress. 
The debate on the bank question, on the tariff of 1816, and on 
the direct tax, will show who was who, and what was what, at 
that time. 

The tariff of 1816 (one of the plain cases of oppression and 
usurpation, from which if the government does not recede, in- 
dividual States may justly secede from the government) is, Sir, 
in truth, a South Carolina tariff, supported by South Carolina 
votes. But for those votes, it could not have passed in the form 
in which it did pass ; whereas, if it had depended on Massachu- 
setts votes, it would have been lost. Does not the honourable 
gentleman well know all this ? There are certainly those who 
do, full well, know it all. I do not say this to reproach South 
Carolina. I only state the fact ; and I think it will appear to be 
true, that among the earliest and boldest advocates of the tariff, 
as a measure of protection, and on the express ground of pro- 
tection, were leading gentlemen of South Carolina in Congress. 
I did not then, and cannot now, understand their language in 
any other sense. While this tariff of 1816 was under discussion 
in the House of Representatives, an honourable gentleman 
from Georgia, now of this House, moved to reduce the proposed 

8 Alluding to Mr. Calhoun, who, at the time this speech was made, was Vice- 
President of the United States, and of course President of the Senate. 



354 WEBSTER. 

duty on cotton. He failed, by four votes, South Carolina giving 
three votes (enough to have turned the scale) against his mo- 
tion. The Act, Sir, then passed, and received on its passage the 
support of a majority of the representatives of South Carolina 
present and voting. This Act is the first in the order of those 
now denounced as plain usurpations. "We see it daily in the 
list, by the side of those of 1824 and 1S28, as a case of manifest 
oppression, justifying disunion. I put it home to the honour- 
able member from South Carolina, that his own State was not 
only "art and part" in this measure, but the causa causans. 
"Without her aid, this seminal principle of mischief, this root of 
Upas, could not have been planted. I have already said, and it 
is true, that this Act proceeded on the ground of protection. It 
interfered directly with existing interests of great value and 
amount. It cut up the Calcutta cotton trade by the roots ; but 
it passed nevertheless, and it passed on the principle of protect- 
ing manufactures, on the principle against free trade, on the 
princiirie opposed to that which lets us alone. 

Such, Mr. President, were the opinions of important and lead- 
ing gentlemen from South Carolina, on the subject of internal 
improvement, in 1816. I went out of Congress the next year ; 
and, returning again in 1823, thought I found South Carolina 
where I had left her. I really supposed that all things remained 
as they were, and that the South Carolina doctrine of internal 
improvements would be defended by the same eloquent voices, 

(and the same strong arms, as formerly. In the lapse of these 
six years, it is true, political associations had assumed a new 
aspect and new divisions. A party had arisen in the South' 
hostile to the doctrine of internal improvements, and had vig- 
orously attacked that doctrine. Anti-consolidation was the Hag 
under which this party fought ; and its supporters inveighed 
against infernal improvements, much after the manner in which 
the honourable gentleman has now inveighed against them, as 
part and parcel of the system of consolidation. Whether this 
party arose in South Carolina herself, or in her neighbourhood, 
is more than I know. I think the latter. However that may 
have been, there were those found in South Carolina ready to 
make war upon it, and who did make intrepid war upon it. 
Names being regarded as things in such controversies, they 
bestowed on the auti-iniprovement gentlemen the appellation 
of Radicals. Yes, Sir, the appellation of Radicals, as a term of 
distinction, applicable and applied to those who denied the lib- 
eral doctrines of internal improvement, originated, according 
to the best of my recollection, somewhere between North Caro- 
lina and Georgia. "Well, Sir, these mischievous Radicals were 
to be put down, and the strong arm of South Carolina was 



SPEECH IK REPLY TO HAYHE. 355* 

stretched out to put them down. About this time, Sir, I re- 
turned to Congress. The battle with the Radicals had been 
fought, and our South Carolina champions of the doctrines of 
internal improvement had nobly maintained their ground, and 
were understood to have achieved a victory. We looked upon 
them as conquerors. They had driven back the enemy with 
discomfiture, — a thing, by the way, Sir, which is not always 
performed when it is promised. 

The tariff, which South Carolina had an efficient hand in 
establishing, in 1816, and this asserted power of internal im- 
provement, advanced by her in the same year, and approved 
and sanctioned by her representatives in 1824, these two meas- 
ures are the great grounds on which she is now thought to be 
justified in breaking up the Union, if she sees fit to break it. 
up ! , 

I go to other remarks of the honourable member ; and I have 
to complain of an entire misapprehension of what I said on the 
subject of the national debt, though I can hardly perceive how 
any one could misunderstand me. What I said was, not that I 
wished to put off the payment of the debt, but, on the contrary, 
that I had always voted for every measure for its reduction, as- 
uniformly as the gentleman himself. He seems to claim the 
exclusive merit of a disposition to reduce the public charge. II 
do not allow it to him. As a debt, I was, I am for paying it,s 
because it is a charge on our finances, and on the industry of 
the country. But I observed, that I thought I perceived a mor- 
bid fervour on that subject, an excessive anxiety to pay off the 
debt, not so much because it is a debt simply, as because, while 
it lasts, it furnishes one objection to disunion. It is, while it 
continues, a tie of common interest. I did not impute such 
motives to the honourable member himself ; but that there is 
such a feeling in existence I have not a particle of doubt. The 
most I said was, that if one effect of the debt was to strengthen 
our Union, that effect itself was not regretted by me, however 
much others might regret it. The gentleman has not seen how 
to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have ad- 
vanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing. 
Others, I must hope, will find much less difficulty in under- 
standing me. I distinctly and pointedly cautioned the honour- 
able member not to understand me as expressing an opinion 
favourable to the continuance of the debt. I repeated this 
caution, and repeated it more than once; but it was thrown 
away. 

On yet another point I was still more unaccountably mis un-, 
derstood. The gentleman had harangued against "consolida- 
tion." I told him, in reply, that there was one kind of consoli-: 



356 WEBSTER. 



dation to which I was attached, and that was the consouda 
tiok of our Union ; that this was precisely that consolida- 
tion to which I feared others were not attached ; and that such 
consolidation was the very end of the Constitution, the leading 
object, as they had informed us themselves, which its framers 
had kept in view. I turned to their communication, and read 
their very words, "the consolidation of the Union," and ex- 
pressed my devotion to this sort of consolidation. I said, in 
terms, that I wished not in the slightest degree to augment the 
powers of this government ; that my object was to preserve, 
not to enlarge ; and that by consolidating the Union I under- 
stood no more than the strengthening of the Union, and per- 
petuating it. Having been thus explicit, having thus read from 
the printed book the precise words which I adopted, as express- 
ing my own sentiments, it passes comprehension how any man 
could understand me as contending for an extension of the 
powers of the government, or for consolidation in that odious 
sense in which it means an accumulation, in the federal gov- 
ernment, of the powers properly belonging to the States. 

I repeat, Sir, that, in adopting the sentiment of the framers 
of the Constitution, I read their language audibly, and word 
for word ; and I pointed out the distinction, just as fully as I 
have now done, between the consolidation of the Union and 
that other obnoxious consolidation which I disclaimed. And 
yet the honourable member misunderstood me. The gentle- 
man had said that he wished for no fixed revenue, — not a shil- 
ling. If by a word he could convert the Capitol into gold, he 
would not do it. Why all this fear of revenue? Why, Sir, 
because, as the gentleman told us, it tends to consolidation. 
Now this can mean neither more nor less than that a common 
revenue is a common interest, and that all common interests 
tend to preserve the union of the States. I confess I like that 
tendency : if the gentleman dislikes it, he is right in deprecat- 
ing a shilling's fixed revenue. So much, Sir, for consolidation. 

Professing to be provoked by what he chose to consider a 
charge made by me against South Carolina, the honourable 
member, Mr. President, has taken up a new crusade against 
New England. Leaving altogether the subject of the public 
lands, in which his success, perhaps, had been neither distin- 
guished nor satisfactory, and letting go, also, of the topic of the 
tariff, he sallied forth in a general assault on the opinions, poli- 
tics, and parties of New England, as they have been exhibited 
in the last thirty years. This is natural. The "narrow policy" 
of the public lands had proved a legal settlement in South Car- 
olina, and was not to be removed. The "accursed policy," of 
the tariff, also, had established the fact of its birth and parent- 



" 






SPEECH I1T REPLY TO HAYtfE. 357 

age in the same State. No wonder, therefore, the gentleman 
wished to carry the war, as he expressed it, into the enemy's 
country. Prudently willing to quit these subjects, he was 
doubtless desirous of fastening on others that which could not 
be transferred south of Mason and Dixon's line. The politics 
of New England became his theme ; and it was in this part of 
his speech, I think, that he menaced me with such sore discom- 
fiture. Discomfiture ! Why, Sir, when he attacks any thing 
which I maintain, and overthrows it ; when he turns the right 
or left of any position which I take up ; when he drives me 
from any ground I choose to occupy, — he may then talk of dis- 
comfiture, but not till that distant day. What has he done? 
Has he maintained his own charges ? Has he proved what he 
alleged? Has he sustained himself in his attack on the govern- 
ment, and on the history of the North, in the matter of the pub- 
lic lands? Has he disproved a fact, refuted a proposition, 
weakened an argument, maintained by me? Has he come 
within beat of drum of any position of mine? O, no ! but he 
has "carried the war into the enemy's country!" Yes, Sir, 
and what sort of a war has he made of it? Why, Sir, he has 
stretched a drag-net over the whole surface of perished pamph- 
lets, indiscreet sermons, frothy paragraphs, and fuming popular 
addresses ; over whatever the pulpit, in its moments of alarm, 
the press in its heats, and parties in their extravagance, have 
severally thrown off in times of general excitement and vio- 
lence. He has thus swept together a mass of such things as, 
but that they are now old and cold, the public health would 
have required him rather to leave in their state of dispersion. 
For a good long hour or two, we had the unbroken pleasure of 
listening to the honourable member, while he recited, with his 
usual grace and spirit, and with evident high gusto, speeches, 
pamphlets, addresses, and all the et ceteras of the political press, 
such as warm heads produce in Avarm times ; and such as it 
would be "discomfiture" indeed for any one, whose taste did 
not delight in that sort of reading, to be obliged to peruse. 
This is his war. This it is to carry the war into the enemy's 
country. It is in an invasion of this sort that he flatters him- 
self with the expectation of gaining laurels fit to adorn a Sena- 
tor's brow ! 

Mr. President, I shall not, it will not, I trust, be expected 
that I should, either now or at any time, separate this farrago 
into parts, and answer and examine its components. 1 shall 
barely bestow upon it all a general remark or two. In the run 
of forty years, Sir, under this Constitution, we have experi- 
enced sundry successive violent party contests. Party arose, 
indeed, with the. Constitution itself, and, in some form or other, 



358 WEBSTER. 

has attended it through the greater part of its history. Whether 
any other constitution than the old Articles of Confederation 
was desirable, was itself a question on which parties divided: if 
a new constitution were framed, what powers should be given 
to it was another question ; and, when it had been formed, 
what was in fact the just extent of the powers actually con- 
ferred was a third. Parties, as we know, existed under the 
first administration, as distinctly marked as those which have 
manifested themselves at any subsequent period. The contest 
immediately preceding the political change in 1801, and that, 
again, which existed at the commencement of the late war, are 
other instances of party excitement, of something more than 
usual strength and intensity. In all these conflicts there was, 
no doubt, much of violence on both and all sides. It would be 
impossible, if one had a fancy for such employment, to adjust 
the relative quantum of violence between these contending par- 
ties. There was enough in each, as must always be expected in 
popular governments. "With a great deal of proper and deco- 
rous discussion, there was mingled a great deal, also, of decla- 
mation, virulence, crimination, and abuse. In regard to any 
party, probably, at one of the leading epochs in the history 
of parties, enough may be found to. make out another in- 
flamed exhibition, not unlike that with which the honourable 
member has edified us. For myself, Sir, I shall not rake 
among the rubbish of bygone times, to see what I can find, or 
whether I cannot find something by which I can fix a blot on 
the escutcheon of any State, any party, or any part of the coun- 
try. General Washington's administration was steadily and 
zealously maintained, as we all know, by New England. It 
was violently opposed elsewhere. We know in what quarter 
he had the most earnest, constant, and persevering support, in 
all his great and leading measures. We know where his pri- 
vate and personal character were held in the highest degree of 
attachment and veneration ; and we know, too, where his meas- 
ures were opposed, his services slighted, and his character vili- 
fied. We know, or we might know, if we turned to the journals, 
who expressed respect, gratitude, and regret when he retired 
from the chief magistracy ; and who refused to express either 
respect, gratitude, or regret. I shall not open those journals. 
Publications more abusive or scurrilous never saw the light, 
than were sent forth against Washington, and all his leading 
measures, from presses south of New England. But I shall 
not look them up. I employ no scavengers ; no one is in at- 
tendance on me, tendering such means of retaliation ; and, if 
there were, with an ass's load of them, with a bulk as huge as 
that which the gentleman himself has produced, I would not 



SPEECH IS. REPLY TO HAYNE. 359 

touch one of them. I see enough of the violence of our own 
times, to be no way anxious to rescue from forgetfulness the 
extravagances of times past. 

Besides, what is all this to the present purpose? It has noth- 
ing to do with the public lands, in regard to which the attack 
was begun ; and it has nothing to do with those sentiments and 
opinions which, I have thought, tend to disunion, and all of 
which the honourable member seems to have adopted himself, 
and undertaken to defend. New England has, at times, (so ar- 
gues the gentlemen,) held opinions as dangerous as those he 
now holds. Suppose this were so : why should he therefore 
abuse New England ? If he finds himself countenanced by acts 
of hers, how is it that, while he relies on these acts, he covers, 
or seeks to cover, their authors with reproach ? But, Sir, if, in 
the course of forty years, there have been undue effervescences 
of party in New England, has the same thing happened no- 
where else? Party animosity and party outrage, not in New 
England, but elsewhere, denounced President Washington, not 
only as a Federalist, but as a Tory, a British agent, a man who 
in his high office sanctioned corruption. But does the honour- 
able member suppose, if I had a tender here who should put 
such an effusion of wickedness and folly in my hand, that I 
would stand up and read it against the South? Parties ran 
into great heats again in 1799 and 1800. What was said, Sir, or 
rather what was not said, in those years, against John Adams, 
one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and its 
admitted ablest defender on the floor of Congress ? If the gen- 
tleman wishes to increase his stores of party abuse and frothy 
violence, if he has a determined proclivity to such pursuits, 
there are treasures of that sort south of the Potomac, much to 
his taste, yet untouched. I shall not touch them. 

The parties which divided the country at the commencement 
of the late war were violent. But then there was violence on 
both sides, and violence in every State. Minorities and majori- 
ties were equally violent. There was no more violence against 
the war in New England than in other States ; nor any more 
appearance of violence, except that, owing to a dense popula- 
tion, greater facility of assembling, and more presses, there 
may have been more in quantity spoken and printed there than 
in some other places. In the article of sermons, too, New Eng- 
land is somewhat more abundant than South Carolina ; and for 
that reason the chance of finding here and there an exception^ 
able one may be greater. I hope, too, there are more good 
ones. Opposition may have been more formidable in New 
England, as it embraced a larger portion of the whole popula- 
tion ; but it was no more unrestrained in its principle, or violent 



360 WEBSTER. 

in manner. The minorities dealt quite as harshly with their 
own State governments as the majorities dealt with the admin- 
istration here. There were presses on both sides, popular 
meetings on both sides, ay, and pulpits on both sides also. The 
gentleman's purveyors have only catered for him among the 
productions of one side. I certainly shall not supply the defi- 
ciency by furnishing samples of the other. I leave to him, and 
to them, the whole concern. 

It is enough for me to say, that if, in any part of this their 
grateful occupation, if, in all their researches, they find any 
thing in the history of Massachusetts, or 3sTew England, or in 
the proceedings of any legislative or other public body, disloyal 
to the Union, speaking slightly of its value, proposing to break 
it up, or recommending non-intercourse with neighbouring 
States, on account of difference of political opinion, then, Sir, I 
give them all up to the honourable gentleman's unrestrained 
rebuke ; expecting, however, that he will extend his buffetings 
in like manner to all similar proceedings, wherever else found. 

The gentleman, Sir, has spoken at large of former parties, 
now no longer in being, by their received appellations, and has 
undertaken to instruct us, not only in the knowledge of their 
principles, but of their respective pedigrees also. He has as- 
cended to their origin, and run out their genealogies. With 
most exemplary modesty, he speaks of the party to which he 
professes to have himself belonged, as the true Pure, the only 
honest, patriotic party, derived by regular descent, from father 
to son, from the time of the virtuous Eomans ! Spreading be- 
fore us the family tree of political parties, he takes especial care 
to show himself snugly perched on a popular bough ! He is 
wakeful to the expediency of adopting such rules of descent as 
shall bring him in, to the exclusion of others, as an heir to the 
inheritance of all public virtue and all true political principle. 
His party and his opinions are sure to be orthodox ; heterodoxy 
is confined to his opponents. He spoke, Sir, of the Federalists, 
and I thought I saw some eyes begin to open and stare a little, 
when he ventured on that ground. I expected he would draw 
his sketches rather lightly, when he looked on the circle round 
him, and especially if he should cast his thoughts to the high 
places out of the Senate. 9 Nevertheless he went back to Eorae, 
ad annum urbis conditce, and found the fathers of the Federalists 

9 The allusion is to President Jackson, who had been an avowed Federalist 
all his life, and whom, for that reason, Jefferson, the father of the old Demo- 
cratic party, had greatly disliked. Nor was Jackson by any means the only 
leader in the new Democratic party of that time, who had grown up in the po- 
litical creed of Federalism. What here follows, in reference to the course of 
parties, is in Webster's happiest vein of satire. 



SPEECH IN REPLY TO HAYNE. 361 

in the primeval aristocrats of that renowned empire ! He 
traced the flow of Federal blood down through successive ages 
and centuries, till he brought it into the veins of the American 
Tories, of whom, by the way, there were twenty in the Caroli- 
nas for one in Massachusetts. From the Tories he followed it 
to the Federalists; and, as the Federal party was broken up, 
and there was no possibility of transmitting it further on this 
side the Atlantic, he seems to have discovered that it has gone 
off collaterally, though against all the canons of descent, into 
the Ultras of France, and finally become extinguished, like ex- 
ploded gas, among the adherents of Don Miguel ! * 

This, Sir, is an abstract of the gentleman's history of Federal- 
ism. I am not about to controvert it. It is not, at present, 
worth the pains of refutation ; because, Sir, if at this day any 
one feels the sin of Federalism lying heavily on his conscience, 
he can easily procure remission. He may even obtain an indul- 
gence, if he be desirous of repeating the same transgression. 
It is an affair of no difficulty to get into this same right line of 
patriotic descent. A man now-a-days is at liberty to choose his 
political* parentage. He may elect his own father. Federalist 
or not, he may, if he choose, claim to belong to the favoured 
stock, and his claim will be allowed. He may carry back his 
pretensions just as far as the honourable gentleman himself; 
nay, he may make himself out the honourable gentleman's 
cousin, and prove, satisfactorily, that he is descended from the 
same political great-grandfather. All this is allowable. "We all 
know a process, Sir, by which the whole Essex Junto could, in 
one hour, be all washed white from their ancient Federalism, 
and come out, every one of them, original Democrats, dyed in 
the wool ! 2 Some of them have actually undergone the opera- 
tion, and they say it is quite easy. The only inconvenience it 
occasions, as they tell us, is a slight tendency of the blood to 
the face, a soft suffusion, which however is very transient, since 
nothing is said by those whom they join calculated to deepen 
the red on the cheek, but a prudent silence is observed in re- 
gard to all the past. Indeed, Sir, some smiles of approbation 
have been bestowed, and some crumbs of comfort have fallen, 
not a thousand miles from the door of the Hartford Convention 

1 Don Miguel was a Portuguese Prince, and one of the claimants of the 
throne of Portugal. He was the leader of the Absolutist faction against the lib. 
eral and constitutional government established by his father, John the Sixth. 
He got possession of the crown in 1S28, and, after a dreadful civil war, was over- 
thrown in 1834. 

2 The Essex Junto was a cluster of men in Essex county, Massachusetts, 
who were somewhat noted for their intense and demonstrative Federalism, and 
who made a special set-to against the embargo of 1807, and the war of 1S12. 



362 WEBSTEB. 

itself. And if the author of the Ordinance of 1787 possessed the 
other requisite qualifications, there is* no knowing, notwith- 
standing his Federalism, to what heights of favour he might 
not yet attain. 

Mr. President, in carrying his warfare, such as it was, into 
ISTew England, the honourable gentleman all along professes to 
be acting on the defensive. He chooses to consider me as 
having assailed South Carolina, and insists that he comes forth 
only as her champion, and in her defence. Sir, I do not admit 
that I made any attack whatever on South Carolina. Nothing 
like it. The honourable member, in his first speech, expressed 
opinions in regard to revenue and some other topics, which I 
heard both with pain and with surprise. I told the gentleman I 
was aware that such sentiments were entertained out of the gov- 
ernment, but had not expected to find them advanced in it ; 
that I knew there were persons in the South who speak of our 
Union with indifference or doubt, taking pains to magnify its 
evils, and to say nothing of its benefits ; that the honourable 
member himself, I was sure, could never be one of these ; and 
I regretted the expression of such opinions as he had |ivowed, 
because I thought their obvious tendency was to encourage 
feelings of disrespect to the Union, and to impair its strength. 
This, Sir, is the sum and substance of all I said on the subject. 
And this constitutes the attack which called on the chivalry of 
the gentleman, in his own opinion, to harry us with such a 
foray among the party pamphlets and party proceedings of 
Massachusetts! If he means that I spoke with dissatisfaction 
or disrespect of the ebullitions of individuals in South Caro- 
lina, it is true. But if he means that I assailed the character 
of the State, her honour, or patriotism, that I reflected on her 
history or her conduct, he has not the slightest ground for any 
such assumption. I did not even refer, I think, in my observa- 
tions, to any collection of individuals. I said nothing of the 
recent conventions. I spoke in the most guarded and careful 
manner, and only expressed my regret for the publication of 
opinions which I presumed the honourable member disap- 
proved as much as myself. In this, it seems, I was mistaken. 
I do not remember that the gentleman has disclaimed any sen- 
timent, or any opinion, of a supposed anti-union tendency, 
which on ail or any of the recent occasions has been expressed. 3 

3 In the Fall of 1828, the legislature of South Carolina set forth an " Exposi- 
tion and Protest," formally asserting 1 the doctrines which were thenceforth 
known as "Nullification." In this instrument they expressl} 7 claimed, In he- 
half of the States, " a veto or control on the action of the General Government, 
on contested points of authority " They also instanced tlie tariff of 1S24 as a 
case that would justify a State in exercising this power of veto or control. . 



SPEECH IK REPLY TO HAYHE. . 363 

The whole drift of his speech has been rather to prove that, 
in divers times and manners, sentiments equally liable to my 
objection have been avowed in New England. And one would 
suppose that his object, in this reference to Massachusetts, was 
to find a precedent to justify proceedings in the South, were it 
not for the reproach and contumely with which he labours, all 
along, to load these his own chosen precedents. By way of 
defending South Carolina from what he chooses to think an 
attack on her, he first quotes the example of Massachusetts, 
and then denounces that example in good set terms. This two- 
fold purpose, not very consistent with itself, one would think, 
was exhibited more than once in the course of his speech. He 
referred, for instance, to the Hartford Convention. Did he do 
this for authority, or for a topic of reproach ? Apparently for 
both ; for he told us that he should find no fault with the mere 
fact of holding such a convention, and considering and discuss- 
ing such questions as he supposes were then and there dis- 
cussed ; but what rendered it obnoxious was its being held at 
the time, and under the circumstances of the country then 
existing. We were in a war, he said, and the country needed 
all our aid ; the hand of government required to be strength- 
ened, not weakened ; and patriotism should have postponed 
such proceedings to another day. The thing itself, then, is a 
precedent ; the time and manner of it only, a subject of cen- 
sure. 

Now, Sir, I go much further, on this point, than the honour- 
able member. Supposing, as the gentleman seems to do, that 
the Hartford Convention assembled for any such purpose as 
breaking up the Union, because they thought unconstitutional 
laws had been passed, or to consult on that subject, or to calcu- 
late the value of the Union, — supposing this to be their purpose, or 
any part of it, then I say the meeting itself was disloyal, and 
was obnoxious to censure, whether held in time of peace or 
time of war, or under whatever circumstances. The material 
question is the object. Is dissolution the object ? If it be, exter- 
nal circumstances may make it a more or less aggravated case, 
but cannot affect the principle. I do not hold, therefore, Sir, 
that the Hartford Convention was pardonable, even to the 
extent of the gentleman's admission, if its objects were really 
such as have been imputed to it. Sir, there never was a time, 
under any degree of excitement, in which the Hartford Con- 
vention, or any other convention, could maintain itself one 
moment in New England, if assembled for any such purpose 
as the gentleman says would have been an allowable purpose. 
To hold conventions to decide constitutional law! To try the 
binding validity of statutes by votes in a convention! Sir, the 



►64 WEBSTER. 






Hartford Convention, I presume, would not desire that the 
honourable gentleman should be their defender or advocate, 
if he puts their case upon such untenable and extravagant 
grounds. 

Then, Sir, the gentleman has no fault to find with these re- 
cently-promulgated South Carolina opinions. And certainly he 
need have none ; for his own sentiments as now advanced, and 
advanced on reflection, as far as I have been able to comprehend 
them, go the full length of all these opinions. I propose, Sir, 
to say something on these, and to consider how far they are 
just and constitutional. Before doing that, however, let me 
observe, that the eulogium pronounced on the character of the 
State of South Carolina by the honourable gentleman, for her 
Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. 
I shall not acknowledge that the honourable member goes 
before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or 
distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim 
part of the honour, I partake in the pride, of her great names. 
I claim them for countrymen, one and all ; the Laurenses, the 
Eutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions, Ameri- 
cans all, whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines, 
than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circum- 
scribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and gen- 
eration, they served and honoured the country, and the whole 
country ; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole 
country. Him whose honoured name the gentleman himself 
bears, — does he esteem me less capable of gratitude for his 
patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had 
first opened upon the light of Massachusetts, instead of South 
Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a 
Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom '? No, 
Sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank God 
that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise 
mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other 
spirit which would drag angels clown. When I shall be found, 
Sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at 
public merit, because it happens to spring up beyond the little 
limits of my own State or neighbourhood ; when I refuse, for 
any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to Amer- 
ican talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to lib- 
erty and the country ; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of 
Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son 
of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by 
State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from 
his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth! 



SPEECH 12* REPLY TO HAYNE. 365 

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections ; let me indulge in 
refreshing remembrance of the past ; let me remind you that, 
in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of 
principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. 
"Would to God that harmony might again return ! Shoulder to 
shoulder they went through the Kevolution; hand in hand they 
stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own 
great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, 
alienation and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to such soils, 
of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of 
which that same great arm never scattered. 

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachu- 
setts ; she needs none. There she is : behold her, and judge 
for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by 
heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Con- 
cord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill ; and there they will re- 
main for ever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great 
struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of 
every State from New England to Georgia ; and there they will 
lie for ever. And, Sir, where American Liberty raised its first 
voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it 
still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original 
spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it ; if party strife 
and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it ; if folly and mad- 
ness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall 
succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its ex- 
istence is made sure ; it will stand, in the end, by the side of 
that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch 
forth its arm, with whatever of vigour it may still retain, over 
the friends who gather round it ; and it will fall at last, if fall it 
must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on 
the very spot of its origin. 

There yet remains to be performed, Mr. President, by far the 
most grave and important duty which I feel to be devolved on 
me by this occasion. It is to state, and to defend, what I con- 
ceive to be the true principles of the Constitution under which 
we are here assembled. I might well have desired that so 
weighty a task should have fallen into other and abler hands. 
I could have wished that it should have been executed by those 
whose character and experience give weight and influence to 
their opinions, such as cannot possibly belong to mine. But, 
Sir, I have met the occasion, not sought it ; and I shall proceed 
to state my own sentiments, without challenging for them any 
particular regard, with studied plainness, and as much precision 
as possible. 






3G6 WEBSTER. 

I understand the honourable gentleman from South Carolina 
to maintain, that it is a right of the State legislatures to inters 
fere, whenever, in their judgment, this government transcends 
its constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws. 

I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing 
under the Constitution, not as a right to overthrow it on the 
ground of extreme necessity, such as would justify violent 
revolution. 

I understand him to maintain an authority, on the part of the. 
States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exer- 
cise of power by the general government, of checking it, and of 
compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its 
powers. 

I understand him to maintain, that the ultimate power of 
judging of the constitutional extent of its own authority is not 
lodged exclusively in the general government, or any branch of 
it; but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide 
for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given 
case, the Act of the general government transcends its power, i 

I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of the case, 
in the opinion of any State government, require it, such State 
government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an Act 
of the general government which it deems plainly and palpa- 
bly unconstitutional. 

This is the sum of what I understand from him to be the 
South Carolina doctrine, and the doctrine which he maintains. 
I propose to consider it, and compare it with the Constitution. 
Allow me to say, as a preliminary remark, that I call this the 
South Carolina doctrine, only because the gentleman himself 
has so denominated it. I do not feel at liberty to say that 
South Carolina, as a State, has ever advanced these sentiments. 
I hope she has not, and never may. That a great majority of 
her people are opposed to the tariff laws, is doubtless true. 
That a majority, somewhat less than that just mentioned, con- 
scientiously believe these laws unconstitutional, may probably^ 
also be true. But that any majority holds to the right of direct 
State interference at State discretion, the right of nullifying 
Acts of Congress, by Acts of State legislation, is more than I 
know, and what I shall be slow to believe. 

That there are individuals besides the honourable gentleman 
who do maintain these opinions, is quite certain. I recollect 
the recent expression of a sentiment, which circumstances at- 
tending its utterance and publication justify us in supposing 
was not unpremeditated: "The sovereignty of the State, — 
never to be controlled, construed, or decided on, but by her 
own feelings of honourable justice." , .' ■ 



SPEECH 12* KEPLY TO HAYNE. 367, 

We all know that civil institutions are established for the pub- 
lic benefit, and that when they cease to answer the ends of their 
existence they may be changed. But I do not understand the 
doctrine now contended for to be that which, for the sake of 
distinctness, we may call the right of revolution. I understand 
the gentleman to maintain, that it is constitutional to interrupt 
the administration of the Constitution itself, in the hands of 
those who are chosen and sworn to administer it, by the direct 
interference, in form of law, of the States, in virtue of their 
sovereign capacity. The inherent right in the people to reform 
their government I do not deny : and they have another right, 
and that is, to resist unconstitutional laws, without overturning 
the government. It is no doctrine of mine, that unconstitu- 
tional laws bind the people. The great question is, Whose pre- 
rogative is it to decide on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality 
of the laws f On that, the main debate hinges. The proposition 
that, in case of a supposed violation of the Constitution by Con- 
gress, the States have a constitutional right to interfere and 
annul the law of Congress, is the proposition of the gentleman. 
I do not admit it. If the gentleman had intended no more than 
to assert the right of revolution for justifiable cause, he would 
have said only what all agree to. But I cannot conceive that 
there can be a middle course, between submission to the laws, 
when regularly pronounced constitutional, on the one hand, 
and open resistance, which is revolution or rebellion, on the 
other. 

This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government, 
and the source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creat- 
ure of the State legislatures, or the creature of the people ? If 
the government of the United States be the agent of the State 
governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree 
in the manner of controlling it: if it be the agent of the people,, 
then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or re- 
form it. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which 
the honourable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity 
of maintaining, not only that this general government is the 
creature of the States, but that it is the creature of each of the 
States severally ; so that each may assert the power, for itself, 
of determining whether it acts within the limits of its authority. 
It is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different wills 
and different purposes, and yet bound to obey all. This absurd- 
ity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to the 
origin of this government and its true character. It is, Sir, the 
people's Constitution, the people's government, made for the. 
people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. 
The people of the United States have declared that this Consti- 






368 WEBSTER. 

tution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the 
proposition or dispute their authority. The States are, unques- 
tionably, sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected 
by this supreme law. But the State legislatures, as political 
bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the peo- 
ple. So far as the people have given power to the general gov- 
ernment, so far the grant is unquestionably good, and the 
government holds of the people, and not of the State govern- 
ments. We are all agents of the same supreme power, the 
people. The general government and the State governments 
derive their authority from the same source. Neither can, in 
relation to the other, be called primary, though one is definite 
and restricted, and the other general and residuary. The na-, 
tional government possesses those powers which it can be 
shown the people have conferred on it, and no more. All the 
rest belongs to the State governments, or to the people them- 
selves. So far as the people have restrained State sovereignty, 
by the expression of their will in the Constitution of the 
United States, so far, it must be admitted, State sovereignty is 
effectually controlled. I do not contend that it is, or ought to 
be, controlled further. The sentiment to which I have referred 
propounds that State sovereignty is only to be controlled by its 
own "feeling of justice;" that is to say, it is not to be con- 
trolled at all ; for one who is to follow his own feelings is under 
no legal control. Now, however men may think this ought to 
be, the fact is, that the people of the United States have chosen 
to impose control on State sovereignties. There are those, 
doubtless, who wish they had been left without restraint ; but 
the Constitution has ordered the matter differently. To make 
war, for instance, is an exercise of sovereignty ; but the Consti- 
tution declares that no State shall make war. To coin money 
is another exercise of sovereign power ; but no State is at lib- 
erty to coin money. Again, the Constitution says that no sov- 
ereign State shall be so sovereign as to make a treaty. These 
prohibitions, it must be confessed, are a control on the State 
sovereignty of South Carolina, as well as of the other States, 
which does not arise "from her own feelings of honourable jus- 
tice." Such an opinion, therefore, is in defiance of the plainest 
provisions of the Constitution. 

There are proceedings of public bodies, to which I refer, 
for the purpose of ascertaining more fully what is the length 
and breadth of that doctrine, denominated the Carolina doc- 
trine, which the honourable member has now stood up on this, 
floor to maintain. In one of them I find it resolved, that "the 
tariff of 1828, and every other tariff designed to promote one 
branch of industry at the expense of others, is contrary to the 




SPEECH IK EEPLT TO HAYNE. 369 

meaning and intention of the federal compact ; and such a 
dangerous, palpable, and deliberate usurpation of power, by a 
determined majority, wielding the general government beyond 
the limits of its delegated powers, as calls upon the States 
which compose the suffering minority, in their sovereign capac- 
ity, to exercise the powers which, as sovereigns, necessarily 
devolve upon them when their compact is violated." 

Observe, Sir, that this resolution includes our old tariff of 
1816, as well as all others ; because that was established to pro- 
mote the interest of the manufacturers of cotton, to the mani- 
fest and admitted injury of the Calcutta cotton trade. Observe, 
again, that all the qualifications are here rehearsed and charged 
upon the tariff, which are necessary to bring the case within 
the gentleman's proposition. The tariff is a usurpation ; it is a 
dangerous usurpation ; it is a palpable usurpation ; it is a delib- 
erate usurpation. It is such a usurpation, therefore, as calls 
upon the States to exercise their right of interference. Here 
is a case, then, within the gentleman's principles, and all his 
qualifications of his principles. It is a case for action. The 
Constitution is plainly, dangerously, palpably, and deliberately 
violated ; and the States must interpose their own authority to 
arrest the law. Let us suppose the State of South Carolina to 
express this same opinion, by the voice of her legislature. 
That would be very imposing : but what then? Is the voice of 
one State conclusive ? It so happens that, at the very moment 
when South Carolina resolves that the tariff laws are unconsti- 
tutional, Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve exactly the re- 
verse. They hold those laws to be both highly proper and 
strictly constitutional. And now, Sir, how does the honourable 
member propose to deal with this case ? How does he relieve 
us from this difficulty, upon any principle of his? His con- 
struction gets us into it ; how does he propose to get us out ? 

In Carolina, the tariff is a palpable, deliberate usurpation : 
Carolina therefore may nullify it, and refuse to*p a y fc he duties. 
In Pennsylvania, it is both clearly constitutional and highly 
expedient ; and there the duties are to be paid. And yet we 
live under a government of uniform laws, and under a Consti- 
tution too, which contains an express provision, as it happens, 
that all duties shall be equal in all the States. Does not this 
approach absurdity ? 

If there be no power to settle such questions, independent 
of either of the States, is not the whole Union a rope of 
sand ? Are we not thrown back again, precisely, upon the old 
Confederation ? 

It is too plain to be argued. Four-and-twenty interpreters 
of constitutional law, each with a power to decide for itself, 



370 • WEBSTER. 

and none with authority to bind anybody else, and this consti- 
tutional law the only bond of their union! What is such a 
state of things but a mere connection during pleasure, or, to 
use the phraseology of the times, during feeling? And that 
feeling too, not the feeling of the people, who established the 
Constitution, but the feeling of the State governments. 

In another of the South Carolina addresses, having premised 
that the crisis requires " all the concentrated energy of passion," 
an attitude of open resistance to the laws of the Union is ad- 
vised. Open resistance to the laws, then, is the constitutional 
remedy, the conservative power of the State, which the South 
Carolina doctrines teach for the redress of political evils, real 
or imaginary. And its authors further say that, appealing with 
confidence to the Constitution itself to justify their opinions, 
they cannot consent to try their accuracy by the courts of justice. 
In one sense indeed, Sir, this is assuming an attitude of open 
resistance in favour of liberty. But what sort of liberty ? The 
liberty of establishing their own opinions, in defiance of the 
opinions of all others ; the liberty of judging and of deciding 
exclusively themselves, in a matter in which others have as 
much right to judge and decide as they ; the liberty of placing 
their own opinions above the judgment of all others, above the 
laws, and above the Constitution. This is their liberty, and this 
is the fair result of the proposition contended for by the hon- 
ourable gentleman. Or, it may be more properly said, it is 
identical with it, rather than a result from it. 

^Resolutions, Sir, have been recently passed by the legislature 
of South Carolina. I need not refer to them : they go no fur- 
ther than the honourable gentleman himself has gone, and I 
hope not so far. I content myself, therefore, with debating the 
matter with him. 

And now, Sir, what I have first to say on this subject is, that 
at no time, an$ under no circumstances, has New England, or 
any State in New England, or any respectable body of persons 
in New England, or any public man of standing in New Eng- 
land, put forth such a doctrine as this Carolina doctrine. New 
England has studied the Constitution in other schools, and un- 
der other teachers. She looks upon it with other regards, and 
deems more highly and reverently both of its just authority 
and its utility and excellence. The history of her legislative 
proceedings may be traced. The ephemeral effusions of tempo- 
rary bodies, called together by the excitement of the occasion, 
may be hunted up : they have been hunted up. The opinions 
and votes of her public men, in and out of Congress, may be 
explored. It will all be in vain. The Carolina doctrine can 
derive from her neither countenance nor support. She rejects 



SPEECH lis" EEPLY TO HAYSTE. -371 

it now ; she always did reject it ; and, till she loses her senses, 
she always will reject it. The honourable member has referred 
to expressions on the subject of the embargo law, made in this 
place, by an honourable and venerable gentleman, now favour- 
ing us with his presence.* Pie quotes that distinguished Senator 
as saying that, in his judgment, the embargo law was unconsti- 
tutional, and that therefore, in his opinion, the people were not 
bound to obey it. That, Sir, is perfectly constitutional lan- 
guage. An unconstitutional law is not binding : but then it does 
not rest with a resolution or a law of a State legislature to decide 
whether an Act of Congress be or be not constitutiorial. An uncon- 
stitutional Act of Congress would not bind the people of this 
District, although they have no legislature to interfere in their 
behalf ; and, on the other hand, a constitutional law of Congress 
does bind the citizens of every State, although all their legisla- 
tures should undertake to annul it by Act or resolution. The 
venerable Connecticut Senator is a constitutional lawyer, of 
sound principles and enlarged knowledge ; a statesman prac- 
tised and experienced, bred in the company of Washington, and 
holding just views upon the nature of our governments. He 
"believed the embargo unconstitutional, and so did others ; but 
what then ? Who did he suppose was to decide that question ? 
The State legislatures? Certainly not. No such sentiment 
ever escaped his lips. 

Let us follow up, Sir, this New England opposition to the 
embargo laws ; let us trace it, till we discern the principle which 
controlled and governed New England throughout the whole 
course of that opposition. We shall then see what similarity 
there is between the New England school of constitutional 
opinions and this modern Carolina school. The gentleman, I 
think, read a petition from some single individual, addressed to 
the legislature of Massachusetts, asserting the Carolina doctrine; 
that is, the right of State interference to arrest the laws of the 
"Union. The fate of that petition shows the sentiment of the 
legislature. It met no favour. The opinions of Massachusetts 
were very different. Misgoverned, wronged, oppressed, as she 
felt herself to be, she still held fast her integrity to the Union. 
The gentleman may find in her proceedings much evidence of 
dissatisfaction with the measures of government, and great and 
deep dislike to the embargo : all this makes the case so much 
the stronger for her ; for, notwithstanding all this dissatisfac- 
tion and dislike, she still claimed no right to sever the bonds of 
the Union. There was heat, and there was anger in her politi- 
cal feeling. Be it so ; but neither her heat nor her anger be- 

4 This " venerable gentleman" was Senator Hillhouse, of Connecticut. 



372 WEBSTER. 



trayed her into infidelity to the government. The gentleman 
labours to prove that she disliked the embargo as much 
South Carolina dislikes the tariff, and expressed her dislike as 
strongly. Be it so : but did she propose the Carolina remedy? did 
she threaten to interfere, by State authority, to annid the laws of the 
Union? That is the question for the gentleman's consideration. 
No doubt, Sir, a great majority of the people of New England 
conscientiously believed the embargo law of 1807 unconstitu- 
tional ; 5 as conscientiously, certainly, as the people of South 
Carolina hold that opinion of the tariff. They reasoned thus: 
Congress has power to regulate commerce ; but here is a law, 
they said, stopping all commerce, and stopping it indefinitely. 
The law is perpetual ; that is, it is not limited in point of time, 
and must of course continue until it shall be repealed by some 
other law. It is as perpetual, therefore, as the law against 
treason or murder. Now, is this regulating commerce, or de- 
stroying it? Is it guiding, controlling, giving the rule to com- 
merce, as a subsisting thing, or is it putting an end to it alto- 
gether? Nothing is more certain than that a majority in New 
England deemed this law a violation of the Constitution. The 
very case required by the gentleman to justify State interfer- 
ence had then arisen. Massachusetts believed this law to be 
"a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of a power not 
granted by the Constitution." Deliberate it was, for it was 
long continued ; palpable she thought it, as no words in the 
Constitution gave the power, and only a construction, in her 

5 This famous embargo law was prompted, as a measure of defence, by the 
fierce commercial war carried on between Great Britain and Napoleon. The 
former fought with her Orders in Council, the latter, by his Berlin and Milan 
Decrees, each in effect interdicting the other from all commerce Avith neutral 
powers. As Great Britain was then mistress of the seas, and as Napoleon had 
all the continent of Europe under his foot, the effect of that Avar was to cut off 
the whole foreign trade of the United States. And the purpose of the embargo 
law was to retaliate on both of the European belligerents by totally excluding 
their ships from all the American ports. This completed the work which the 
Orders and Decrees aforesaid had begun. I quote from Mr. G. T. Curtis's Life 
of Daniel Webster: "No measure of the Federal Government, since the adop- 
tion of the Constitution, had ever appeared, to most of those on whose interests 
it directly operated, so sudden, so unnecessary, and so oppressive, as the Em- 
bargo. It fell upon the Eastern States with a terrific weight. Six towns in 
New England possessed more than a third of the tonnage of the whole Union. 
At one blow, this great mass of shipping was rendered almost valueless. The 
numerous classes, who were dependent on its active employment for their live- 
lihood, were suddenly deprived of their long-accustomed means of earning their 
daily bread." — Perhaps I ought to add that, to meet the exigency, President 
Jefferson called an extra session of Congress in October, 1807 ; on the 18th of 
December, sent Congress a message recommending the Embargo ; and the bill 
to that effect became a law on the 22d of the same month. This was sudden 
indeed ! 



ian 
as 

as 



SPEECH IX REPLY TO HAYNE. 373 

opinion most violent, raised it; dangerous it was, since it 
threatened utter ruin to her most important interests. Here, 
then, was a Carolina case. How did Massachusetts deal with 
it ? It was, as she thought, a plain, manifest, palpable violation 
of the Constitution, and it brought ruin to her doors. Thou- 
sands of families, and hundreds of thousands of individuals, 
were beggared by it. While she saw and felt all this, she saw 
and felt also, that, as a measure of national policy, it was per- 
fectly futile ; that the country was no way benefited by that 
which caused so much individual distress ; that it was efficient 
only for the production of evil, and all that evil inflicted on our- 
selves. In such a case, under such circumstances, how did 
Massachusetts demean herself? Sir, she remonstrated, she 
memorialized, she addressed herself to the general government, 
not exactly "with the concentrated energy of passion," but 
with her own strong sense, and the energy of sober conviction. 
But she did not interpose the arm of her own power to arrest 
the law, and break the embargo. Far from it. Her principles 
bound her to two things ; and she followed her principles, lead 
where they might. First, to submit to every constitutional law 
of Congress ; and, secondly, if the constitutional validity of the 
law be doubted, to refer that question to the decision of the 
proper tribunals. The first principle is vain and ineffectual 
without the second. A majority of us in New England believed 
the embargo law unconstitutional ; but the great question was, 
and always will be, in such cases, Who is to decide this ? Who 
is to judge between the people and the government? And, Sir, 
it is quite plain, that the Constitution of the United States con- 
fers on the government itself, to be exercised by its appropriate 
department, and under its own responsibility to the people, this 
power of deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the just 
extent of its own authority. If this had not been' done, we 
should not have advanced a single step beyond the old 
Confederation. 

Being fully of opinion that the embargo law was unconstitu- 
tional, the people of New England were yet equally clear in the 
opinion (it was a matter they did not doubt upon) that the ques- 
tion, after all, must be decided by the judicial tribunals of the 
United States. Before those tribunals, therefore, they brought 
the question. Under the provisions of the law, they had given 
bonds, to millions in amount, and which were alleged to be for- 
feited. They suffered the bonds to be sued, and thus raised 
the question. In the old-fashioned way of settling disputes, 
they went to law. The case came to hearing, and solemn argu- 
ment ; and he who espoused their cause, and stood up for them 
against the validity of the embargo Act, was none other than 



o<4 WEBSTER. 

that great man, of whom the gentleman has made honourable 
mention, Samuel Dexter. He was then, Sir, in the fulness of 
his knowledge and the maturity of his strength. He had retired 
from long and distinguished public service here, to the renewed 
pursuit of professional duties ; carrying with him all that en- 
largement and expansion, all the new strength and force, which 
an acquaintance with the more general subjects discussed in the 
national councils is capable of adding to professional attain- 
ment, in a mind of true greatness and comprehension. He was 
a lawyer, and he was also a statesman. He had studied the 
Constitution, when he filled public station, that he might de- 
fend it ; he had examined its principles, that he might maintain 
them. More than all men, or at least as much as any man, he 
was attached to the general government and to the union of the 
States. His feelings and opinions all ran in that direction. A 
question of constitutional law, too, was, of all subjects, that one 
which was best suited to his talents and learning. Aloof from 
technicality, and unfettered by artificial rule, such a question 
gave opportunity for that deep and clear analysis, that mighty 
grasp of principle, which so much distinguished his higher 
efforts. His very statement was argument ; his inference 
seemed demonstration. The earnestness of his own conviction 
wrought conviction in others. One was convinced, and be- 
lieved, and assented, because it was gratifying, delightful, to 
think, and feel, and believe, in unison with an intellect of such 
evident superiority. 

Mr. Dexter, Sir, such as I have described him, argued the 
New England cause. He put into his effort his whole heart, as 
well as all the powers of his understanding ; for he had avowed, 
in the most public manner, his entire concurrence with his 
neighbours on the point in dispute. He argued the cause : it 
was lost, and New England submitted. The established tribu- 
nals pronounced the law constitutional, and New England 
acquiesced. Now, Sir, is not this the exact opposite of the doc- 
trine of the gentleman from South Carolina? According to 
him, instead of referring to the judicial tribunals, we should 
have broken up the embargo by laws of our own ; we should 
have repealed it, quoad New England ; for we had a strong, 
palpable, and oppressive case. Sir, we believed the embargo 
unconstitutional ; but still that was matter of opinion, and who 
was to decide it ? We thought it a clear case ; but, neverthe. 
less, we did not take the law into our own hands, because we did 
not wish to bring about a revolution, nor to break the Union : 
for I maintain that, between submission to the decision of the 
constituted tribunals and revolution, or disunion, there is no 
middle ground; there is no ambiguous condition, half allegiance, 



SPEECH IK REPLY TO HAYKE. 375 

and half rebellion. And, Sir, how futile, how very futile it is, 
to admit the right of State interference, and then attempt to 
save it from the character of unlawful resistance, by adding 
terms of qualification to the causes and occasions, leaving all 
these qualifications, like the case itself, in the discretion of 
the State governments ! It must be a clear case, it is said, a 
deliberate case ; a palpable case ; a dangerous case. But then 
the State is still left at liberty to decide for herself what is 
clear, what is deliberate, what is palpable, what is dangerous. 
Do adjectives and epithets avail any thing ? 

Sir, the human mind is so constituted, that the merits of 
both sides of a controversy appear very clear, and very palpa- 
ble, to those who respectively espouse them ; and both sides 
usually grow clearer as the controversy advances. South Caro- 
lina sees unconstitutionality in the tariff ; she sees oppression 
there also, and she sees danger. Pennsylvania, with a vision 
not less sharp, looks at the same tariff, and sees no such thing 
in it ; she sees it all constitutional, all useful, all safe. The 
faith of South Carolina is strengthened by opposition, and she 
now not only sees, but resolves, that the tariff is palpably un- 
constitutional, oppressive and dangerous : but Pennsylvania, 
not to be behind her neighbours, and equally willing to 
strengthen her own faith by a confident asseveration, resolves, 
also, and gives to every warm affirmative of South Carolina a 
plain, downright, Pennsylvania negative. South Carolina, to 
show the strength and unity of her opinion, brings her assem- 
bly to a unanimity, within seven voices : Pennsylvania, not to 
be outdone in this respect more than others, reduces her dis- 
sentient fraction to a single vote. Now, Sir, again I ask the 
gentleman, What is to be done? Are these States both right? 
Is he bound to consider them both right ? If not, which is in 
the wrong? or, rather, which has the best right to decide? 
And if he, and if I, are not to know what the Constitution 
means, and what it is, till those two State legislatures, and the 
twenty-two others, shall agree in its construction, what have 
we sworn to, when we have sworn to maintain it? All this, 
Sir, shows the inherent futility — I had almost used a stronger 
word — of conceding this power of interference to the States, 
and then attempting to secure it from abuse by imposing quali- 
fications of which the States themselves are to judge. One of 
two things is true,— either the laws of the Union are beyond 
the discretion and beyond the control of the States ; or else we 
have no constitution of general government, and are thrust 
back again to the days of the Confederation. 

Let me here say, Sir, that if the gentleman's doctrine had 
been received and acted upon in New England, in the times of 



376 WEBSTEE. 

the embargo and non-intercourse, we should probably not now 
have been here. The government would very likely have gone 
to pieces, and crumbled into dust. No stronger case can ever 
arise than existed under those laws ; no States can ever enter- 
tain a clearer conviction than the New England States then 
entertained ; and if they had been under the influence of that 
heresy of opinion, as I must call it, which the honourable mem- 
ber espouses, this Union would, in all probability, have been 
scattered to the four winds. I ask the gentleman, therefore, to 
apply his principles to that case ; I ask him to come forth and 
declare whether, in his opinion, the New England States would 
have been justified in interfering to break up the embargo sys- 
tem, under the conscientious opinions which they held upon it? 
Had they a right to annul that law? Does he admit or deny? 
If what is thought palpably unconstitutional in South Carolina 
justifies that State in arresting the progress of the law, tell me 
whether that which was thought palpably unconstitutional also 
in Massachusetts would have justified her in doing the same 
thing. Sir, I deny the whole doctrine. It has not a foot of 
ground in the Constitution to stand on. No public man of 
reputation ever advanced it in Massachusetts in the warmest 
times, or could maintain himself upon it there at any time. 

I must now beg to ask, Sir, whence is this supposed right of 
the States derived? Where do they find the power to interfere 
with the laws of the Union ? Sir, the opinion which the hon- 
ourable gentleman maintains is a notion founded in a total 
misapprehension, in my judgment, of the origin of this govern- 
ment, and of the foundation on which it stands. I hold it to be 
a popular government, erected by the people ; those who ad- 
minister it, responsible to the people ; and itself capable of 
being amended and modified, just as the people may choose it 
should be. It is as popular, just as truly emanating from the 
people, as the State governments. It is created for one pur- 
pose ; the State governments for another. It has its own 
powers ; they have theirs. There is no more authority with 
them to arrest the operation of a law of Congress, than with 
Congress to arrest the operation of their laws. We are here to 
administer a Constitution emanating immediately from the peo- 
ple, and trusted by them to our administration. It is not the 
creature of the State governments. It is of no moment to the 
argument, that certain acts of the State legislatures are neces- 
sary to fill our seats in this body. That is not one of their origi- 
nal State powers, a part of the sovereignty of the State. It is a 
duty which the people, by the Constitution itself, have imposed 
on the State legislatures ; and which they might have left to be 



SPEECH IK REPLY TO HAYHE. 377 

performed elsewhere, if they had seen fit. So they have left 
the choice of President with electors ; but all this does not 
affect the proposition, that this whole government, President, 
Senate, and House of Representatives, is a popular govern- 
ment. It leaves it still all its popular character. The governor 
of a State (in some of the States) is chosen, not directly by the 
people, but by those who are chosen by the people, for the pur- 
pose of performing, among other duties, that of electing a gov- 
ernor. Is the government of the State, on that account, not a 
popular government? This government, Sir, is the independent 
offspring of the popular will. It is not the creature of State 
legislatures ; nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, the 
people brought it into existence, established it, and have hith- 
erto supported it, for the purpose, amongst others, of imposing 
certain salutary restraints on State sovereignties. The States 
cannot now make war; they cannot contract alliances; they 
cannot make, each for itself, separate regulations of commerce ; 
they cannot lay imposts ; they cannot coin money. If this Con- 
stitution, Sir, be the creature of State legislatures, it must be 
admitted that it has obtained a strange control over the voli- 
tions of its creators. 

The people, then, Sir, erected this government. They gave it 
a Constitution, and in that Constitution they have enumerated 
the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a lim- 
ited government. They have denned its authority. They have 
restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted ; and 
all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or the peo- 
ple. But, Sir, they have not stopped here. If they had, they 
would have accomplished but half their work. ~No definition 
can be so clear as to avoid possibility of doubt ; no limitation so 
precise as to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe 
this grant of the people ? Who shall interpret their will, where 
it may be supposed they have left it doubtful ? With whom do 
they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers of the 
government? Sir, they have settled all this in the fullest man- 
ner. They have left it with the government itself, in its appro- 
priate branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main design, for 
which the whole Constitution was framed and adopted, was to 
establish a government that should not be obliged to act 
through State agency, or depend on State opinion and State dis- 
cretion. The people had had quite enough of that kind of 
government under the Confederation. Under that system, the 
legal action, the application of law to individuals, belonged ex- 
clusively to the States. Congress could only recommend ; their 
Acts were not of binding force, till the States had adopted and 
sanctioned them ? Are we in that condition still ? Are we yet 



378 WEBSTER. 

at the mercy of State discretion and State construction ? Sir, 
if we are, then vain will be our attempt to maintain the Consti- 
tution under which we sit. 

But, Sir, the people have wisely provided, in the Constitution 
itself, a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for settling ques- 
tions of constitutional law. There are in the Constitution 
grants of powers to Congress, and restrictions on these powers. 
There are, also, prohibitions on the States. Some authority 
must, therefore, necessarily exist, having the ultimate jurisdic- 
tion to fix and ascertain the interpretation of these grants, 
restrictions, and prohibitions. The Constitution has itself 
pointed out, ordained, and established that authority. How 
has it accomplished this great and essential end? By declar- 
ing, Sir, that "the Constitution and the laws of the United States 
made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, 
any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary 
notwithstanding." 

This, Sir, was the first great step. By this the supremacy of 
the Constitution and laws of the United States is declared. The 
people so will it. No State law is to be valid which comes in 
conflict with the Constitution or any law of the United States 
passed in pursuance of it. But who shall decide this question 
of interference ? To whom lies the last appeal ? This, Sir, the 
Constitution itself decides also, by declaring " that the judicial 
power shall extend to all cases arising under the Constitution and 
laws of the United States." These two provisions, Sir, cover the 
whole ground. They are, in truth, the keystone of the arch. 
With these, it is a government; without them, it is a confeder- 
ation. In pursuance of these clear and express provisions, 
Congress established, at its very first session, in the judicial 
Act, a mode for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing 
all questions of constitutional power to the final decision of the 
Supreme Court. It then, Sir, became a government. It then 
had the means of self -protection ; and, but for this, it would, in 
all probability, have been now among things which are past. 
Having constituted the government, and declared its j)owers, 
the people have further said that, since somebody must decide 
on the extent of these powers, the government shall itself 
decide ; subject, always, like other popular governments, to its 
responsibility to the people. And now, Sir, I repeat, how is it 
that a State legislature acquires any power to interfere ? Who, 
or what, gives them the right to say to the people, "We, who 
are your agents and servants for one purpose, will undertake to 
decide that your other agents and servants, appointed by you 
for another purpose, have transcended the authority you gave 
them" ? The reply would be, I think, not impertinent, "Who 



SPEECH IN" ItEPLY TO HAYlsTE. 379 

made you a judge over another's servants ? To their own mas- 
ters they stand or fall." 

Sir, I deny this power of State legislatures altogether. It 
cannot stand the test of examination. Gentlemen may say that 
in an extreme case a State government might protect the peo- 
ple from intolerable oppression. Sir, in such a case the people 
might protect themselves, without the aid of the State govern- 
ments. Such a case warrants revolution. It must make, when 
it comes, a law for itself. A nullifying Act of a State legisla- 
ture cannot alter the case, nor make resistance any more lawful. 
In maintaining these sentiments, Sir, I am but asserting the 
rights of the people. I state what they have declared, and 
insist on their right to declare it. They have chosen to repose 
this power in the general government, and I think it my duty to 
support it, like other constitutional powers. 

For myself, Sir, I do not admit the competency of South Caro- 
lina, or any other State, to prescribe my constitutional duty ; 
or to settle, between me and the people, the validity of laws of 
Congress, for which I have voted. I decline her umpirage. I 
have not sworn to support the Constitution according to her 
construction of its clauses. I have not stipulated, by my oath 
of office or otherwise, to come under any responsibility, except 
to the people, and those whom they have appointed to pass 
upon the question, whether laws, supported by my votes, con- 
form to the Constitution of the country. And, Sir, if we look 
to the general nature of the case, could any thing have been 
more preposterous than to make a government for the whole 
Union, and yet leave its powers subject, not to one interpreta- 
tion, but to thirteen or twenty-four interpretations? Instead 
of one tribunal, established by all, responsible to all, with 
power to decide for all, shall constitutional questions be left to 
four-and-twenty popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for 
itself, and none bound to respect the decisions of others ; and 
each at liberty, too, to give a new construction on every new 
election of its own members? "Would any thing with such a 
principle in it, or rather with such a destitution of all principle, 
be fit to be called a government? No, Sir. It should not be 
denominated a Constitution. It should be called, rather, a col- 
lection of topics for everlasting controversy ; heads of debate 
for a disputatious people. It would not be a government. It 
would not be adequate to any practical good, nor fit for any 
country to live under. 

To avoid all possibility of being misunderstood, allow me to 
repeat again, in the fullest manner, that I claim no powers for 
the government by forced or unfair construction. I admit that 
it is a government of strictly limited powers ; of enumerated, 



380 



WEBSTEit. 



specified, and particularized powers ; and that whatsoever is 
not granted, is withheld. But notwithstanding all this, and 
however the grant of powers may be expressed, its limits and 
extent may yet, in some cases, admit of doubt ; and the general 
government would be good for nothing, it would be incapable 
of long existing, if some mode had not been provided in which 
those doubts, as they should arise, might be peaceably, but 
authoritatively, solved. 

And now, Mr. President, let me run the honourable gentle- 
man's doctrine a little into its practical application. Let us look 
at his probable modus operandi. If a thing can be done, an 
ingenious man can tell Iww it is to be clone ; and I wish to be 
informed how this State interference is to be put in practice, 
without violence, bloodshed, and rebellion. We will take the 
existing case of the tariff law. South Carolina is said to have 
made up her opinion upon it. If we do not repeal it, (as we 
probably shall not,) she will then apply to the case the remedy 
of her doctrine. She will, we must suppose, pass -a law of her 
legislature, declaring the several Acts of Congress, usually 
called the tariff laws, null and void, so far as they respect South 
Carolina, or the citizens thereof. So far, all is a paper transac- 
tion, and easy enough. But the collector at Charleston is col- 
lecting the duties imposed by these tariff laws. He, therefore, 
must be stopped. The collector will seize the goods if the 
tariff duties are not paid. The State authorities will undertake 
their rescue ; the marshal, with his posse, will come to the col- 
lector's aid ; and here the contest begins. The militia of the 
State will be called out to sustain the nullifying Act. They 
will march, Sir, under a very gallant leader ; for I believe the 
honourable member himself commands the militia of that part 
of the State. He will raise the nullifying Act on his stand- 
ard, and spread it out as his banner ! It will have a preamble, 
setting forth that the tariff laws are palpable, deliberate, and 
dangerous violations of the Constitution ! He will proceed, 
with this banner flying, to the custom-house in Charleston, "all 
the while, sonorous metal blowing martial sounds." Arrived 
at the custom-house, he will tell the collector that he must col- 
lect no more duties under any of the tariff laws. This he will 
be somewhat puzzled to say, by the way, with a grave counte- 
nance, considering what hand South Carolina herself had in 
that of 181G. But, Sir, the collector would probably not desist 
at his bidding. He would show him the law of Congress, the 
treasury instruction, and his own oath of office. He would say, 
he should perform his duty, come what come might. 

Here would ensue a pause ;.for they say that a certain still- 
ness precedes the tempest. The trumpeter would hold his 



SPEECH IK KEPLY TO HAYHE. 381 

breath awhile, and, before all this military array should fall on 
the custom-house, collector, clerks, and all, it is very probable 
some of those composing it would request of their gallant com- 
mander-in-chief to be informed a little upon the point of law ; 
for they have doubtless a just respect for his opinions as a law- 
yer, as well as for his bravery as a soldier. They know he has 
read Blackstone and the Constitution, as well as Turenne and 
Yauban. They would ask him, therefore, something concern- 
ing their rights in this matter. They would inquire whether it 
was not somewhat dangerous to resist a law of the United 
States. What would be the nature of their offence, they would 
wish to learn, if they, by military force and array, resisted the 
execution in Carolina of a law of the United States, and it 
should turn out, after all, that the law was constitutional f He 
would answer, of course, Treason. 2sTo lawyer could give any 
other answer. John Fries, 6 he would tell them, had learned 
that, some years ago. How, then, they would ask, do you pro- 
pose to defend us ? We are not afraid of bullets, but treason 
has a way of taking people off that we do not much relish. 
How do you propose to defend us? "Look at my floating ban- 
ner," he would reply; "see there the nullifying law!" Is it 
your opinion, gallant commander, they would then say, that, if 
we should be indicted for treason, that same floating banner of 
yours would make a good plea in bar? "South Carolina is a 
sovereign State," he would reply. That is true ; but would the 
judge admit our plea? "These tariff laws," he would repeat, 
"are unconstitutional, palpably, deliberately, dangerously." 
That all may be so ; but if the tribunal should not happen to be 
of that opinion, shall we swing for it? We are ready to die for 
our country, but it is rather an awkward business, this dying 
without touching the ground ! After all, that is a sort of hemp 
tax worse than any part of the tariff. 

Mr. President, the honourable gentleman would be in a di- 
lemma, like that of another great general. He would have a 
knot before him which he could not untie. He must cut it with 
his sword. He must say to his followers, "Defend yourselves 
with your bayonets" ; and this is war, — civil war. 

Direct collision, therefore, between force and force is the un- 
avoidable result of that remedy for the revision of unconstitu- 
tional laws which the gentleman contends for. It must happen 
in the very first case to which it is applied. Is not this the 
plain result? To resist by force the execution of a law, gener- 
ally, is treason. Can the courts of the United States take 

6 Congress having laiU. a tax on whiskey, a rebellion broke out in Pennsylva- 
nia against the law, so great that it had to be put down by military force, and 
John Fries came to grief as a leader in that rebellion. 



382 WEBSTER. 

notice of the indulgence of a State to commit treason? The 
common saying, that a State cannot commit treason herself, is 
nothing to the purpose. Can she authorize others to do it? If 
John Fries had produced an Act of Pennsylvania, annulling the 
law of Congress, would it have helped his case ? Talk about it 
as we will, these doctrines go the length of revolution. They 
are incompatible with any peaceable administration of the gov- 
ernment. They lead directly to disunion and civil commotion ; 
and therefore it is, that at their commencement, when they are 
first found to be maintained by respectable men, and in a 
tangible form, I enter my public protest against them all. 

The honourable gentleman argues, that if this government be 
the sole judge of the extent of its own powers, whether that 
right of judging be in Congress or the Supreme Court, it equally 
subverts State sovereignty. This the gentleman sees, or thinks 
he sees, although he cannot perceive how the right of judging, 
in this matter, if left to the exercise of State legislatures, has 
any tendency to subvert the government of the Union. The 
gentleman's opinion may be, that the right ought not to have 
been lodged with the general government ; he may like better 
such a constitution as we should have under the right of State 
interference ; but I ask him to meet me on the plain matter of 
fact. I ask him to meet me on the Constitution itself. I ask 
him if the power is not found there, clearly and visibly found 
there ? 

But, Sir, what is this danger, and what are the grounds of it? 
Let it be remembered that the Constitution of the United 
States is not unalterable. It is to continue in its present form 
no longer than the people who established it shall choose to 
continue it. If they shall become convinced that they have 
made an injudicious or inexpedient partition and distribution of 
power between the State governments and the general govern- 
ment, they can alter that distribution at will. 

If any thing be found in the national Constitution, either by 
original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought 
not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any 
construction be established, unacceptable to them, so as to 
become, practically, a part of the Constitution, they will amend 
it, at their own sovereign pleasure. But, while the people 
choose to maintain it as it is ; while they are satisfied with it, 
and refuse to change it ; who has given, or who can give, to the 
State legislatures a right to alter it, either by interference, 
construction, or otherwise? Gentlemen do not seem to recol- 
lect that the people have any power to do any thing for them- 
selves. They imagine there is no safety for them, any longer 
than they are under the close guardianship of the State legisla- 



SPEECH IK REPLY TO HAYSTE. 383 

tures. Sir, the people have not trusted their safety, in regard 
to the general Constitution, to these hands. They have re- 
quired other security, and taken other bonds. They have 
chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain words of the 
instrument, and to such construction as the government itself, 
in doubtful cases, should put on its own powers, under their 
oaths of office, and subject to their responsibility to them ; 
just as the people of a State trust their own State governments 
with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their trust 
in the efficacy of frequent elections, and in their own power to 
remove their own servants and agents, whenever they see 
cause. Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial power, 
which, in order that it might be trustworthy, they have made 
as respectable, as disinterested, and as independent as was 
practicable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of 
necessity, or high expediency, on their known and admitted 
power to alter or amend the Constitution, peaceably and 
quietly, whenever experience shall point out defects or imper- 
fections. And, finally, the people of the United States have at 
no time, in no way, directly or indirectly, authorized any State 
legislature to construe or interpret their high instrument of 
government ; much less, to interfere, by their own power, to 
arrest its course and operation. 

If, Sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than 
they have done, their Constitution could neither have been 
preserved, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if 
its plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new 
doctrines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and help- 
less a being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, could 
possibly desire. It will exist in every State but as a poor de- 
pendent on State permission. It must borrow leave to be ; and 
will be no longer than State pleasure, or State discretion, sees 
fit to grant the indulgence, and to prolong its poor existence. 

But, Sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. 
The people have preserved this their own chosen Constitution 
for forty years, and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and 
renown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength. 
They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown 
by direct assault, it cannot be ; evaded, undermined, nulli- 
fied, it will not be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here, 
as agents and representatives of the people, shall conscien- 
tiously and vigilantly discharge the two great branches of our 
public trust,— faithfully to preserve, and wisely to administer it. 

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent 
to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I 
am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too 



384 WEBSTER. 

long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous delibera- 
tion, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and impor- 
tant a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, 
and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its 
spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself 
to relinquish it, without expressing, once more, my deep con- 
viction that, since it respects nothing less than the Union of 
the States, it is of most vital and essential importance to the 
public happiness. I profess, Sir, in my career hitherto, to have 
kept steadily in view the prosperity and honour of the whole 
country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to 
that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration 
and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly 
indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. 
That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in 
the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessi- 
ties of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined 
credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests im- 
mediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with 
newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with 
fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and, although our 
territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population 
spread further and further, they have not outrun its protection 
or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of 
national, social, and personal happiness. 

I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union, to 
see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have 
not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the 
bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have 
not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, 
to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of 
the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor 
in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be 
mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may be best 
preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the 
people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the 
Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread 
out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not 
to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that 
curtain may not rise ! God grant that on my vision never may 
be opened what lies behind ! When my eyes shall be turned to 
behold, for the last time, the Sun in heaven, may 1 not see him 
shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once 
glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; 
on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fra- 
ternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather 



BLESSINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 385 

behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and 
honoured throughout the Earth, still full high advanced, its 
arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe 
erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured ; bearing for its 
motto, no such miserable interrogatory, as "What is all this 
worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty 
first, and Union afterwards" ; but everywhere, spread all over 
in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as 
they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind 
under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every 
true American heart, — Liberty and Union, now and for ever, 
one and inseparable I 



BLESSINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 7 

Gentlemen, as connected with the Constitution, you have 
local recollections which must bind it still closer to your at- 
tachment and affection. It commenced its being and its bless- 
ings here. It was in this city, in the midst of friends, anxious 
hopeful, and devoted, that the new government started in its 
course. To us, who are younger, it has come down by tradi- 
tion ; but some around me are old enough to have witnessed, 
and did witness, the interesting scene of the first inauguration. 
They remember what voices of gratified patriotism, what shouts 
of enthusiastic hope, what acclamations rent the air, how many 
eyes were suffused with tears of joy, how cordially each man 
pressed the hand of him who was next to him, when, standing 
in the open air, in the centre of the city, in the view of assem- 
bled thousands, the first President was heard solemnly to pro- 
nounce the words of his official oath, repeating them from the 

7 This very noble strain of discourse is from a speech made on the following 
occasion. In February, 1831, soon after the delivery of the great speech in reply 
to Hayne, some leading gentlemen of New York invited Webster to a public 
dinner, as a mark of honour for his powerful championship of the Union. The 
dinner took place in the City Hotel on the 10th of March. Chancellor Kent pi-e- 
sided; and, on introducing Webster to the assembly, he referred, in strong and 
eloquent terms, to the great Senator's recent work in Congress, and closed with 
the following: "Socrates was said to have drawn down philosophy from the 
skies, and scattered it among the schools. It may with equal truth be said that 
constitutional law, by means of those senatorial discussions and the master 
genius that guided them, was rescued from the archives of our tribunals and the 
libraries of our lawyers, and placed under the eye, and submitted to the judg- 
ment, of the American people. Their verdict is with us, and from it there lies no 
appeal." 



386 WEBSTER. 

lips of Chancellor Livingston. You then thought, Gentlemen, 
that the great work of the Revolution was accomplished. You 
then felt that you had a government ; that the United States 
were then, indeed, united. Every benignant star seemed to 
shed its selectest influence on that auspicious hour. Here were 
heroes of the Eevolution ; here were sages of the Convention ; 
here were minds, disciplined and schooled in all the various 
fortunes of the country, acting now in several relations, but all 
cooperating to the same great end, the successful administra- 
tion of the new and untried Constitution. And he,— how shall 
I speak of him? — he was at the head, who was already first in 
war, who was already first in the hearts of his countrymen, and 
who was now shown also, by the unanimous suffrage of the 
country, to be first in peace. 

Gentlemen, how gloriously have the hopes then indulged 
been fulfilled ! Whose expectation was then so sanguine, I 
may almost ask whose imagination then so extravagant, as to 
run forward, and contemplate as probable the one half of what 
has been accomplished in forty years ? Who among you can go 
back to 1789, and see what this city, and this country too, then 
were ; and, beholding what they now are, can be ready to 
consent that the Constitution of the United States shall be 
weakened,— dishonoured, — nullified f 

The legislative history of the first two or three years of the 
government is full of instruction. It presents, in striking light, 
the evils intended to be remedied by the Constitution, and the 
provisions which were deemed essential to the remedy of those 
evils. It exhibits the country, in the moment of its change 
from a weak and ill-defined confederacy of States into a gen- 
eral, efficient, but still restrained and limited government. It 
shows the first working of our peculiar system, moved, as it 
then was, by master hands. 

Gentlemen, for one, I confess I like to dwell on this part of 
our history. It is good for us to be here. It is good for us to 
study the situation of the country at this period, to survey its 
difficulties, to look at the conduct of its public men, to see how 
they struggled with obstacles, real and formidable, and how glo- 
riously they brought the country out of its state of depression 
and distress. Truly, Gentlemen, these founders and fathers of 
the Constitution were great men, and thoroughly furnished for 
every good work. All that reading and learning could do ; all 
that talent and intelligence could do ; and, what perhaps is still 
more, all that long experience in difficult and troubled times, 
and a deep and intimate practical knowledge of the condition of 
the country, could do, — conspired to fit them for the great busi- 
ness of forming a general, but limited government, embracing 



BLESSINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 387 

common objects, extending over all the States, and yet touching 
the power of the States no further than those common objects 
require. I confess I love to linger around these original foun- 
tains, and to drink deep of their waters. I love to imbibe, in as 
full measure as I may, the spirit of those who laid the founda- 
tions of the government, and so wisely and skilfully balanced 
and adjusted its bearings and proportions. 

Gentlemen, what I have said of the benefits of the Constitu- 
tion to your city might be said, with little change, in respect to 
every other part of the country. Its benefits are not exclusive. 
What has it left undone, which any government could do, for 
the whole country ? In what condition has it placed us ?' Where 
do we now stand ? Are we elevated, or degraded, by its opera- 
tion? What is our condition under its influence, at the very 
moment when some talk of arresting its power and breaking its 
unity ? Do we not feel ourselves on an eminence ? Do we not 
challenge the respect of the whole world? What has placed us 
thus high? What has given us this just pride? What else is 
it, but the unrestrained and free operation of that same Fed- 
eral Constitution which it has been proposed now to hamper, 
and manacle, and nullify? Who is there among us, that, 
should he find himself on any spot of the Earth where human 
beings exist, and where the existence of other nations is known, 
would not be proud to say, I am an American? I am a country- 
man of Washington? I am a citizen of that Republic which, 
although it has suddenly sprung up, yet there are none on the 
globe who have ears to hear, and have not heard of ; who have 
eyes to see, and have not read of ; who know any thing, and yet 
do not know of its existence and its glory ? And, Gentlemen, 
let me now reverse the picture. Let me ask, who there is 
among us, if he were to be found to-morrow in one of the civil- 
ized countries of Europe, and were there to learn that this 
goodly form of government had been overthrown ; that the 
United States were no longer united ; that a death-blow had 
been struck upon their bond of union ; that they themselves 
had destroyed their chief good and their chief honour; — who 
is there whose heart would not sink within him ? Who is there 
who would not cover his face for very shame ? 

At this very moment, Gentlemen, our country is a general 
refuge for the distressed and the persecuted of other nations. 
Whoever is in affliction from political occurrences in his own 
country looks here for shelter. Whether he be republican, 
flying from the oppression of thrones, or whether he be mon- 
arch or monarchist, flying from thrones that crumble and fall 
under or around him, he feels equal assurance that, if he get 



388 WEBSTER. 

foothold on our soil, his person will be safe, and his rights 
will be respected. 

And who will venture to say that, in any government now 
existing in the world, there is greater security for persons or 
property than in that of the United States ? "We have tried 
these popular institutions in times of great excitement and 
commotion, and they have stood, substantially, firm and steady, 
while the fountains of the great political deep have been else- 
where broken up ; while thrones, resting on ages of prescrip- 
tion, have tottered and fallen ; and while, in other countries, 
the earthquake of unrestrained popular commotion has swal- 
lowed up all law and all liberty and all right together. Our gov- 
ernment has been tried in peace, and it has been tried in war ; 
and has proved itself fit for both. It has been assailed from 
without, and it has successfully resisted the shock ; it has been 
disturbed within, and it has effectually quieted the disturbance. 
It can stand trial, it can stand assault, it can stand adversity, 
it cau stand every thing but the marring of its own beauty, and 
the weakening of its own strength. It can stand every thing 
but the effects of our own rashness and our own folly. • It 
can stand every thing but disorganization, disunion, and 
nullification. 

It is a striking fact, and as true as it is striking, that at this 
very moment, among all the principal civilized States of the 
world, that government is most secure against the danger of 
popular commotion, which is itself entirely popular. Certain it 
is, that, in these times of so much popular knowledge and so 
much popular activity, those governments which do not admit 
the people to partake in their administration, but keep them 
under and beneath, sit on materials for an explosion, which 
may take place at any moment, and blow them into a thousand 
atoms. 

Gentlemen, let any man who would degrade and enfeeble the 
national Constitution, let any man who would nullify its laws, 
stand forth and tell us what he would wish. What does he 
propose? Whatever he may be, and whatever substitute he 
may hold forth, I am sure the people of this country will de- 
cline his kind interference, and hold on by the Constitution 
which they possess. Any one who would willingly destroy it, 
I rejoice to know, would be looked upon with abhorrence. It 
is deeply entrenched in the regards of the people. Doubtless 
it may be undermined by artful and long-continued hostility; 
it may be imperceptibly weakened by secret attack ; it may be 
insidiously shorn of its powers by slow degrees ; the public 
vigilance may be lulled, and when it awakes it may find the 
Constitution frittered away. In these modes, or some of 



BLESSINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 389 

them, it is possible that the union of the States may be 
dissolved. 

But if the general attention of the people be kept alive, if 
they see the intended mischief before it is effected, they will 
prevent it by their own sovereign power. They will interpose 
themselves between the meditated blow and the object of their 
regard and attachment. Next to the controlling authority of 
the people themselves, the preservation of the government is 
mainly committed to those who administer it. If conducted in 
wisdom, it cannot but stand strong. Its genuine, original 
spirit is a patriotic, liberal, and generous spirit ; a spirit of con- 
ciliation, of moderation, of candour, and charity ; a spirit of 
friendship, and not a spirit of hostility toward the States ; a 
spirit careful not to exceed, and equally careful not to relin- 
quish, its just powers. While no interest can or ought to feel 
itself shut out from the benefits of the Constitution, none 
should consider those benefits as exclusively its own. The 
interests of all must be consulted, and reconciled, and provided 
for, as far as possible, that all may perceive the benefits of a 
united government. 

Among other things, we are to remember that new States 
have arisen, possessing already an immense population, spread- 
ing and thickening over vast regions which were a wilderness 
when the Constitution was adopted. Those States are not, 
like New York, directly connected with maritime commerce. 
They are entirely agricultural, and need markets for con- 
sumption ; and they need, too, access to those markets. It is 
the duty of the government to bring the interests of these new 
States into the Union, and incorporate them closely in the 
family compact. Gentlemen, it is not impracticable to recon- 
cile these various interests, and so to administer the govern- 
ment as to make it useful to all. It was never easier to admin- 
ister the government than it is now. We are beset with none, 
or with few, of its original difficulties ; and it is a time of great 
general prosperity and happiness. Shall we admit ourselves 
incompetent to carry on the government, so as to be satisfactory 
to the whole country? Shall we admit that there has so little 
descended to us of the wisdom and prudence of our fathers? 
If the government could be administered in Washington's 
time, when it was yet new, when the country was heavily in 
debt, when foreign relations were threatening, and when Indian 
wars pressed on the frontiers, can it not be administered now ? 
Let us not acknowledge ourselves so unequal to our duties. 

Gentlemen, on the occasion referred to by the Chair, it be- 
came necessary to consider the judicial power, and its proper 
functions under the Constitution. In every free and balanced 



390 WEBSTER. 

government, this is a most essential and important power. 
Indeed, I think it is a remark of Mr. Hume, that the adminis- 
tration of justice seems to be the leading object of institutions 
of government ; that legislatures assemble, that armies are 
embodied, that both war and peace are made, with a sort oi 
ultimate reference to the proper administration of laws, and 
the judicial protection of private rights. The judicial power 
comes home to every man. If the legislature passes incorrect 
or unjust general laws, its members bear the evil as well as 
others. But judicature acts on individuals. It touches every 
private right, every private interest, and almost every private 
feeling. What we possess is hardly fit to be called our own, 
unless we feel secure in its possession ; and this security, this 
feeling of perfect safety, cannot exist under a wicked, or even 
under a weak and ignorant, administration of the laws. There 
is no happiness, there is no liberty, there is no enjoyment of 
life, unless a man can say, when he rises in the morning, I 
shall be subject to the decision of no unjust judge to-day. 

But, Gentlemen, the judicial department, under the Consti- 
tution of the United States, possesses still higher duties. It is 
true, that it may be called on, and is occasionally called on, to 
decide questions which are, in one sense, of a political nature. 
The general and State governments, both established by the 
people, are established for different purposes, and with differ- 
ent powers. Between those powers questions may arise ; and 
who shall decide them? Some provision for this end is abso- 
lutely necessary. What shall it be? This was the question 
before the Convention ; and various schemes were suggested. 
It was foreseen that the States might inadvertently pass laws 
inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or with 
Acts of Congress. At least, laws might be passed which would 
be charged with such inconsistency. How should these ques- 
tions be disposed of? Where shall the power of judging, in 
case of alleged interference, be lodged? One suggestion in 
the Convention was, to make it an executive power, and to 
lodge it in the hands of the President, by requiring all State 
laws to be submitted to him, that he might negative such as he 
thought appeared repugnant to the general Constitution. This 
idea, perhaps, may have been borrowed from the power exer- 
cised by the Crown over the laws of the Colonies. It would 
evidently have been not only an inconvenient and troublesome 
proceeding, but dangerous also to the powers of the States. It 
was not pressed. It was thought wiser and safer, on the whole, 
to require State legislatures and State judges to take an oath to 
support the Constitution of the United States, and then leave 
the States at liberty to pass whatever laws they pleased, and if 



BLESSINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 391 

interference, in point of fact, should arise, to refer the question 
to judicial decision. To this end, the judicial power, under the 
Constitution of the United States, was made coextensive with 
the legislative power. It was extended to all cases arising 
under the Constitution and the laws of Congress. The judi- 
ciary became thus possessed of the authority of deciding, in 
the last resort, in all cases of alleged interference, between 
State laws and the Constitution and laws of Congress. 

Gentlemen, this is the actual Constitution, this is the law of 
the land. There may be those who think it unnecessary, or who 
would prefer a different mode of deciding such questions. But 
this is the established mode, and, till it be altered, the courts 
can no more decline their duty, on these occasions, than on 
other occasions. But can any reasonable man doubt the expe- 
diency of this provision, or suggest a better? Is it not abso- 
lutely essential to the peace of the country that this power 
should exist somewhere? Where can it exist, better than 
where it now does exist? The national judiciary is the com- 
mon tribunal of the whole country. It is organized by the 
common authority, and its places filled by the common agent. 
This is a plain and practical provision. It was framed by no 
bunglers, nor by any wild theorists. And who can say that it 
has failed? Who can find substantial fault with its operation 
or its results ? The great question is, whether we shall provide 
for the peaceable decision of cases of collision. Shall they be 
decided by law or by force ? Shall the decisions be decisions 
of peace, or decisions of war ? 

On the occasion which has given rise to this meeting, the prop- 
osition contended for in opposition to the doctrine just stated 
was, that every State, under certain supposed exigencies, and in 
certain supposed cases, might decide for itself, and act for 
itself, and oppose its own force to the execution of the laws. 
By what argument do you imagine, Gentlemen, that such a 
proposition was maintained? I might call it metaphysical and 
subtile ; but these terms would imply at least ingenuity, and 
some degree of plausibility ; whereas the argument appears to 
me plain assumption, mere perverse construction of plain lan- 
guage in the body of the Constitution itself. As I understand 
it, when put forth in its revised and most authentic shape, it is 
this: That the Constitution provides that any amendments may 
be made to it which shall be agreed to by three fourths of the 
States: there is, therefore, to be nothing in the Constitution to 
which three fourths of the States have not agreed. All this is 
true ; but then comes this inference, namely, that, when one 
State denies the constitutionality of any law of Congress, she 
may arrest its execution as to herself, and keep it arrested, till 






392 WEBSTER. 

the States can all be consulted by their conventions, and three 
fourths of them shall have decided that the law is constitu- 
tional. Indeed, the inference is still stranger than this : for 
State conventions have no authority to construe the Constitu- 
tion, though they have authority to amend it ; therefore the 
argument must prove, if it prove any thing, that, when any one 
State denies that any particular power is included in the Consti- 
tution, it is to be considered as not included, and not to be 
found there till three fourths of the States agree to insert it. 
In short, the result of the whole is, that, though it requires 
three fourths of the States to insert any thing in the Constitu- 
tion, yet any one State can strike any thing out of it. For the 
power to strike out, and the power of deciding, without appeal, 
upon the construction of what is already in, are substantially 
and practically the same. 

And, Gentlemen, what a spectacle should we have exhibited 
under the actual operation of notions like these ! At the very 
moment when our government was quoted, praised, and com- 
mended all over the world ; when the friends of republican lib- 
erty everywhere were gazing at it with delight, and were in 
perfect admiration at the harmony of its movements, one State 
steps forth, and, by the power of nullification, breaks up the 
whole system, and scatters the bright chain of the Union into 
as many sundered links as there are separate States ! 

Seeing the true grounds of the Constitution thus attacked, I 
raised my voice in its favour, I must confess, with no prepara- 
tion or previous intention. I can hardly say that I embarked in 
the contest from a sense of duty. It was an instantaneous im- 
pulse of inclination, not acting against duty, I trust, but hardly 
waiting for its suggestions. I felt it to be a contest for the in- 
tegrity of the Constitution, and I was ready to enter into it, not 
thinking, or caring, personally, how I might come out. 

Gentlemen, I have true pleasure in saying that I trust the 
crisis has in some measure passed by. The doctrines of nullifi- 
cation have received a severe and stern rebuke from public 
opinion. The general reprobation of the country has been cast 
upon them. Recent expressions of the most numerous branch 
of the national legislature are decisive and imposing. Every- 
where, the general tone of public feeling is for the Constitution. 
While much will be yielded — everything, almost, but the in- 
tegrity of the Constitution, and the essential interests of the 
country — to the cause of mutual harmony and mutual concilia- 
tion, no ground can be granted, not an inch, to menace and 
bluster. Indeed, menace and bluster, and the putting -forth 
of daring unconstitutional doctrines, are, at this very moment, 
the chief obstacles to mutual harmony and satisfactory accom- 



BLESSINGS OF THE CONSTITUTION". 393 

modation. Men cannot well reason, and confer, and take coun- 
sel together, about the discreet exercise of a power, with those 
who deny that any such power rightfully exists, and who 
threaten to blow up the whole Constitution if they cannot 
otherwise get rid of its operation. It is matter of sincere grati- 
fication, Gentlemen, that the voice of this great State has been 
so clear and strong, and her vote all but unanimous, on the 
most interesting of these occasions, in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Certainly, such respect to the Union becomes New 
York. It is consistent with her interests and her character. 
That singularly prosperous State — which now is, and is likely 
to continue to be, the greatest link in the chain of the Union — 
will ever be, it is to be hoped, the strongest link also. The 
great States which lie in her neighbourhood agreed with her 
fully in this matter. Pennsylvania, I believe, was loyal to the 
Union, to a man ; and Ohio raises her voice, like that of a lion, 
against whatsoever threatens disunion and dismemberment. 
This harmony of sentiment is truly gratifying. It is not to be 
gainsaid, that the union of opinion in this great central mass of 
our population, on this momentous point of the Constitution, 
augurs well for our future prosperity and security. 

I have said, Gentlemen, what I verily believe to be true, that 
there is no danger to the Union from open and avowed attacks 
on its essential principles. Nothing is to be feared from those 
who will march up boldly to their own propositions, and tell us 
that they mean to annihilate powers exercised by Congress. 
But, certainly, there are dangers to the Constitution, and we 
ought not to shut our eyes to them. We know the importance 
of a firm and intelligent judiciary: but how shall we secure the 
continuance of a firm and intelligent judiciary? Gentlemen, 
the judiciary is in the appointment of the executive power. It 
cannot continue or renew itself. Its vacancies are to be filled 
in the ordinary modes of executive appointment. If the time 
shall ever come, (which Heaven avert !) when men shall be 
placed in the supreme tribunal of the country who entertain 
opinions hostile to the just powers of the Constitution, we shall 
then be visited by an evil defying all remedy. Our case will be 
past surgery. From that moment the Constitution is at an end. 
If they who are appointed to defend the castle shall betray it, 
woe betide those within ! If I live to see that day come, I shall 
despair of the country. I shall be prepared to give it back to 
all its former afflictions, in the days of the Confederation. I 
know no security against the possibility of this evil, but an 
awakened public vigilance. I know no safety, but in that state 
of public opinion which shall lead it to rebuke and put clown 
every attempt, either to gratify party by judicial appointments, 



394 WEBSTER. 

or to dilute the Constitution by creating a court which shall 
construe away its provisions. If members of Congress betray 
their trust, the people will find it out before they are ruined. 
If the President should at any time violate his duty, his term of 
office is short, and popular elections may supply a seasonable 
remedy. But the judges of the Supreme Court possess, for 
very good reasons, an independent tenure of office. No elec- 
tion reaches them. If, with this tenure, they betray their 
trusts, Heaven save us ! Let us hope for better results. The 
past, certainly, may encourage us. Let us hope that we shall 
never see the time when there shall exist such an awkward pos- 
ture of affairs, as that the government shall be found in opposi- 
tion to the Constitution, and when the guardians of the Union 
shall become its betrayers. 

Gentlemen, our country stands, at the present time, on com- 
manding ground. Older nations, with different systems of 
government, may be somewhat slow to acknowledge all that 
justly belongs to us. But we may feel without vanity, that 
America is doing her part in the great work of improving 
human affairs. There are two principles, Gentlemen, strictly 
and purely American, which are now likely to overrun the 
civilized world. Indeed, they seem the necessary result of the 
progress of civilization and knowledge. These are, first, popu- 
lar governments, restrained by written constitutions ; and, 
secondly, universal education. Popular governments and gen- 
eral education, acting and reacting, mutually producing and 
reproducing each other, are the mighty agencies which in our 
days appear to be exciting, stimulating, and changing civilized 
societies. Man, everywhere, is now found demanding a par- 
ticipation in government, — and he will not be refused; and 
he demands knowledge as necessary to self-government. On 
the basis of these two principles, liberty and knowledge, our 
own American systems rest. Thus far we have not been disap- 
pointed in their results. Our existing institutions, raised on 
these foundations, have conferred on us almost unmixed hap- 
piness. Do we hope to better our condition by change ? When 
we shall have nullified the present Constitution, what are we 
to receive in its place ? As fathers, do we wish for our children 
better government or better laws ? As members of society, as 
lovers of our country, is there any thing we can desire for it 
better than that, as ages and centuries roll over it, it may 
possess the same invaluable institutions which it now enjoys? 
For my part, Gentlemen, I can only say, that I desire to thank 
the beneficent Author of all good for being born where I was 
born, and when I was born ; that the portion of human exist- 
ence allotted to me has been meted out to me in this goodly 



PRESIDENTIAL NULLIFICATION. 395 

land, and at this interesting period. I rejoice that I have lived 
to see so much development of truth, so much progress of 
liberty, so much diffusion of virtue and happiness. And, 
through good report and evil report, it will be my consolation 
to be a citizen of a republic unequalled in the annals of the 
world for the freedom of its institutions, its high prosperity, 
and the prospects of good which yet lie before it. Our course, 
Gentlemen, is onward, straight onward, and forward. Let us 
not turn to the right hand nor to the left. Our path is marked 
out for us, clear, plain, bright, distinctly denned, like the milky 
way across the heavens. If we are true to our country, in our 
day and generation, and those who come after us shall be true 
to it also, assuredly, assuredly we shall elevate her to a pitch 
of prosperity and happiness, of honour and power, never yet 
reached by any nation beneath the Sun. 



PEESIDENTIAL NULLIFICATION 8 

I now proceed, Sir, to a few remarks upon the President's 
constitutional objections to the bank ; and I cannot forbear to 
say, in regard to them, that he appears to me to have assumed 
very extraordinary grounds of reasoning. He denies that the 
constitutionality of the bank is a settled question. If it be not, 
will it ever become so, or what disputed question ever can be 
settled? 

As early as 1T91, after great deliberation, the first bank 
charter was passed by Congress, and approved by President 
Washington. It established an institution, resembling, in all 
things now objected to, the present bank. That bank, like 
this, could take lands in payment of its debts ; that charter, 
like the present, gave the States no power of taxation ; it 
allowed foreigners to hold stock ; it restrained Congress from 
creating other banks. It gave also exclusive privileges, and in 

8 The pages which follow under this heading are from a speech delivered in 
the Senate, July 11, 1S32, on President Jackson's Veto of the bill rechartering 
the Bank of the United States. That speech is, I think, a highly instructive and 
important passage in Webster's great course of constitutional expositions; and 
I here reproduce what seem to me the main points of his argument. It is not 
easy to see how the President's reasonings in his veto message differ, in princi- 
ple, from the nullilication doctrines of South Carolina; but there is this to be 
said of General Jackson, that he was too honest to see the nullification clement 
in those reasonings, and at the same time too patriotic and too determined in 
character to tolerate any overt act of nullification in another. 



396 TVEBSTEE. 

all particulars it was, according to the doctrine of the message, 
as objectionable as that now existing. That bank continued 
twenty years. In 1816, the present institution was established, 
and has been ever since in full operation. Now, Sir, the ques- 
tion of the power of Congress to create such institutions has 
been contested in every manner known to our Constitution 
and laws. The forms of the government furnish no new mode 
in which to try this question. It has been discussed over and 
over again, in Congress ; it has been argued and solemnly 
adjudged in the Supreme Court ; every President, except the 
present, has considered it a settled question ; many of the 
State legislatures have instructed their Senators to vote for the 
bank ; the tribunals of the States, in every instance, have sup- 
ported its constitutionality ; and, beyond - all doubt and dispute, 
the general public opinion of the country has at all times given, 
and does now give, its full sanction and approbation to the 
exercise of this power, as being a constitutional power. There 
has been no opinion questioning the power expressed or inti- 
mated, at any time, by either House of Congress, by any Pres- 
ident, or by any respectable judicial tribunal. Now, Sir, if this 
practice of near forty years ; if these repeated exercises of the 
power ; if this solemn adjudication of the Supreme Court, with 
the concurrence and approbation of public opinion, — do not 
settle the question, how is any question ever to be settled, 
about which any one may choose to raise a doubt? 

But the President does not admit the authority of precedent. 
Sir, I have always found that those who habitually deny most 
vehemently the general force of precedent, and assert most 
strongly the supremacy of private opinion, are yet, of all men, 
most tenacious of that very authority of precedent, whenever 
it happens to be in their favour. I beg leave to ask, Sir, upon 
what ground, except that of precedent, and precedent alone, 
the President's friends have placed his power of removal from 
office ? No such power is given by the Constitution, in terms, 
nor anywhere intimated, throughout the whole of it ; no para- 
graph or clause of that instrument recognizes such a power. 
To say the least, it is as questionable, and has been as often 
questioned, as the power of Congress to create a bank ; and, 
enlightened by what has passed under our own observation, we 
now see that it is of all powers the most capable of flagrant 
abuse. 9 Now, Sir, I ask again, What becomes of this power, if 

9 President Jackson, within the first two years of his administration, made 
not less than two thousand removals from office, all in favour of his party. Then 
it was that the government entered upon the custom of using the whole system 
of federal offices as the bribes and rewards of political partisanship. Up to that 
time, the power of removal had been exercised only in a few extreme cases. 



PKESIDENTIAL NULLIFICATION. 397 

the authority of precedent be taken away ? It has all along been 
denied to exist ; it is nowhere found in the Constitution ; and 
its recent exercise, or— to call things by their right names — its 
recent abuse, has, more than any other single cause, rendered 
good men either cool in their affections toward the government 
of their country or doubtful of its long continuance. Yet, there 
is precedent in favour of this power, and the President exercises 
it. We know, Sir, that, without the aid of that precedent, his 
acts could never have received the sanction of this body, even 
at a time when his voice was somewhat more potential here 
than it now is, or, as I trust, ever again will be. Does the 
President, then, reject the authority of all precedent except 
what it is suitable to his, own purposes to use? And does he 
use, without stint or measure, all precedents which may aug- 
ment his own power, or gratify his own wishes ? 

But if the President thinks lightly of the authority of Congress 
in construing the Constitution, he thinks still more lightly of the 
authority of the Supreme Court. He asserts a right of individ- 
ual judgment on constitutional questions, which is totally incon- 
sistent with any proper administration of government, or any 
regular execution of the laws. Social disorder, entire uncer- 
tainty in regard to individual rights and individual duties, the 
cessation of legal authority, confusion, the dissolution of free 
government, — all these are the inevitable consequences of the 
principles adopted by the message, whenever they shall be 
carried to their full extent. Hitherto it has been thought that 
the final decision of constitutional questions belonged to the 
supreme judicial tribunal. The very nature of free govern- 
ment, it has been supposed, enjoins this ; and our Constitution, 
moreover, has been understood so to provide, clearly and ex- 
pressly. It is true, that each branch of the legislature has an 
undoubted right, in the exercise of its functions, to consider 
the constitutionality of a law proposed to be passed. This is 
naturally a part of its duty ; and neither branch can be com- 
pelled to pass any law, or do any other act, which it deems to 
be beyond the reach of its constitutional power. The Presi- 
dent has the same right, when a bill is presented for his ap- 
proval ; for he is doubtless bound to consider, in all cases, 
whether such bill i>e compatible with the Constitution, and 
whether he can approve it consistently with his oath of office. 
But when a law has been passed by Congress, and approved by 
the President, it is now no longer in the power either of the 
same President or his successors to say whether the law is 

The abuse of it has since done more perhaps than any other one thing to corrupt 
and debauch our politics. 



398 WEBSTEB. 

constitutional or not. He is not at liberty to disregard it ; he 
is not at liberty to feel or affect "constitutional scruples," and 
to sit in judgment himself on the validity of a statute of the 
government, and to nullify it, if he so chooses. After a law 
has passed through all the requisite forms, after it lias received 
the requisite legislative sanction and the executive approval, 
the question of its constitutionality then becomes a judicial 
question, and a judicial question alone. In the courts that 
question may be raised, argued, and adjudged ; it can be ad- 
judged nowhere else. 

The President is as much bound by the law as any private 
citizen, and can no more contest its validity than any private 
citizen. He may refuse to obey the law, and so may a private 
citizen ; but both do it at their own peril, and neither of them 
can settle the question of its validity. The President may say a, 
law is unconstitutional, but he is not the judge. Who is to 
decide that question? The judiciary alone possesses this un- 
questionable and hitherto unquestioned right. The judiciary is 
the constitutional tribunal of appeal, for the citizens, against 
both Congress and the executive, in regard to the constitution- 
ality of laws. It has this jurisdiction expressly conferred upon 
it ; and when it has decided the question, its judgment must, 
from the very nature of all judgments from which there is no 
appeal, be conclusive. Hitherto, this opinion, and a corres- 
pondent practice, have prevailed, in America, with all wise and 
considerate men. If it were otherwise, there would be no gov- 
ernment of laws ; but we should all live under the government, 
the rule, the caprices of individuals. 

On the argument of the message, the President of the United 
States holds, under a new pretence and a new name, a dispens- 
ing power over the laws as absolute as was claimed by James 
the Second of England, a month before he was compelled to fly 
the kingdom. That which is now claimed by the President is 
in truth nothing less, and nothing else, than the old dispensing 
power asserted by the Kings of England in the worst of times ; 
the very climax indeed of all the preposterous pretensions of 
the Tudor and the Stuart races. According to the doctrines 
put forth by the President, although Congress may have passed 
a law, and although the Supreme Court may have pronounced 
it constitutional, yet it is, nevertheless, no law at all, if he, in 
his good pleasure, sees fit to deny it effect ; in other words, to 
repeal and annul it. Sir, no President and no public man ever 
before advanced such doctrines in the face of the nation. 
There never before was a moment in which any President 
would have been tolerated in asserting such a claim to despotic 
power. It is no bank to be created, it is no law proposed to be 



PRESIDENTIAL NULLIFICATION. 399 

passed, which the President denounces ; it is the law now exist- 
ing, passed by Congress, approved by President Madison, and 
sanctioned by a solemn judgment of the Supreme Court, which 
he now declares unconstitutional, and which, of course, so far 
as it may depend on him, cannot be executed. 

If the reasoning of the message be well founded, it is clear 
that the charter of the existing bank is not a law. The bank 
has no legal existence ; it is not responsible to government ; it 
has no authority to act ; it is incapable of being an agent ; the 
President may treat it as a nullity, to-morrow ; withdraw from 
it all the public deposits, and set afloat all the existing national 
arrangements of revenue and finance. It is enough to state 
these monstrous consequences, to show that the doctrine, prin- 
ciples, and pretensions of the message are entirely inconsistent 
with a government of laws. If that which Congress has en- 
acted, and the Supreme Court has sanctioned, be not the law 
of the land, then the reign of law has ceased, and the reign of 
individual opinion has already begun. 

There is another sentiment in this part of the message, which 
we should hardly have expected to find in a paper which is sup- 
posed, whoever may have drawn it up, to have passed under 
the review of professional characters. The message declares 
that the limitation to create no other bank is unconstitutional, 
because, although Congress may use the discretion vested in 
them, "they may not limit the discretion of their successors." 
This reason is almost too superficial to require an answer. 
Every one, at all accustomed to the consideration of such sub- 
jects, knows that every Congress can bind its successors to the 
same extent that it can bind itself. The power of Congress is 
always the same ; the authority of law always the same. It is 
true, we speak of the Twentieth Congress and the Twenty-first 
Congress ; but this is only to denote the period of time, or to 
mark the successive organizations of the House of Represent- 
atives under the successive periodical elections of its members. 
As a politic body, as the legislative power of the government, 
Congress is always continuous, always identical. A particular 
Congress, as we speak of it, — for instance, the present Congress, 
— can no further restrain itself from doing what it may choose 
to do at the next session, than it can restrain any succeeding 
Congress from doing what it may choose. Any Congress may 
repeal the Act or law of its predecessors, if in its nature it be 
repealable, just as it may repeal its own Act ; and if a law or an 
Act be irrepealable in its nature, it can no more be repealed by 
a subsequent Congress than by that which passed it. All this 
is familiar to everybody. And Congress, like every other legis- 
lature, often passes Acts which, being in the nature of grants 



400 WEBSTER. 

or contracts, are irrepealable ever afterwards. The message, 
in a strain of argument which it is difficult to treat with ordi- 
nary respect, declares that this restriction on the power of 
Congress, as to the establishment of other banks, is a palpable 
attempt to amend the Constitution by an Act of legislation. 
The reason on which this observation purports to be founded 
is, that Congress, by the Constitution, is to have exclusive leg- 
islation over the District of Columbia ; and when the bank 
charter declares that Congress will create no new bank within 
the District, it annuls this power of exclusive legislation ! I 
must say that this reasoning hardly rises high enough to enti- 
tle it to a passing notice. It would be doing it too much credit 
to call it plausible. No one needs to be informed that exclu- 
sive power of legislation is not unlimited power of legislation ; 
and if it were, how can that legislative power be unlimited that 
cannot restrain itself, that cannot bind itself by contract? 
"Whether as a government or as an individual, that being is fet- 
tered and restrained which is not capable of binding itself by 
ordinary obligation. Every legislature binds itself, whenever 
it makes a grant, enters into a contract, bestows an office, or 
does any other act or thing which is in its nature irrepealable. 
And this, instead of detracting from its legislative power, is 
one of the modes of exercising that power. And the legislative 
power of Congress over the District of Columbia would not be 
full and complete, if it might not make just such a stipulation 
as the bank charter contains. 

What I have now been considering are the President's objec- 
tions, not to the policy or expediency, but to the constitutional- 
ity of the bank ; and not to the constitutionality of any new or 
proposed bank, but of the bank as it now is, and as it has long 
existed. If the President had declined to approve this bill 
because he thought the original charter unwisely granted, and 
the bank, in point of policy and expediency, objectionable or 
mischievous, and in that view only had suggested the reasons 
now urged by him, his argument, however inconclusive, would 
have been intelligible, and not, in its whole frame and scope, 
inconsistent with all well-established first principles. His re- 
jection of the bill, in that case, would have been, no doubt, an 
extraordinary exercise of power ; but it would have been, never- 
theless, the exercise of a power belonging to his office, and 
trusted by the Constitution to his discretion. But when he 
puts forth an array of arguments, such as the message employs, 
not against the expediency of the bank, but against its constitu- 
tional existence, he confounds all distinctions, mixes questions 
of policy and questions of right together, and turns all consti- 
tutional restraints into mere matters of opinion. As far as its 



PRESIDENTIAL NULLIFICATION. 401 

power extends either in its direct effects, or as a precedent, the 
message not only unsettles every thing which has been settled 
under the Constitution, but would show, also, that the Consti- 
tution itself is utterly incapable of any fixed construction or 
definite interpretation, and that there is no possibility of estab- 
lishing, by its authority, any practical limitations on the powers 
of the respective branches of the government. 

When the message denies, as it does, the authority of the 
Supreme Court to decide on constitutional questions, it effects, 
so far as the opinion of the President and his authority can 
effect, a complete change in our government. It does two 
things: first, it converts constitutional limitations of power into 
mere matters of opinion, and then it strikes the judicial depart- 
ment, as an efficient department, out of our system. But the 
message by no means stops even at this point. Having denied 
to Congress the authority of judging what powers may be con- 
stitutionally conferred on a bank, and having erected the judg- 
ment of the President himself into a standard by which to try 
the constitutional character of such powers, and having de- 
nounced the authority of the Supreme Court to decide finally 
on constitutional questions, the message proceeds to claim for 
the President,' not the power of approval, but the primary 
power, the power of originating laws. The President informs 
Congress, that he would have sent them such a charter, if it had 
been properly asked for, as they ought to confer. He very 
plainly intimates that, in his opinion, the establishment of all 
laws, of this nature at least, belongs to the functions of the 
executive government ; and that Congress ought to have waited 
for the manifestation of the executive will, before it presumed 
to touch the subject. Such, Mr. President, stripped of their 
disguises, are the real pretences set up in behalf of the execu- 
tive power in this most extraordinary paper. 

Mr. President, we have arrived at a new epoch. We are en- 
tering on experiments, with the government and the Constitu- 
tion of the country, hitherto untried, and of fearful and appalling 
aspect. This message calls us to the contemplation of a future 
which little resembles the past. Its principles are at war with 
all that public opinion has sustained, and all which the experi- 
ence of the government has sanctioned. It denies first princi- 
ples ; it contradicts truths heretofore received as indisputable. 
It denies to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and claims 
to divide with Congress the power of originating statutes. It 
extends the grasp of executive pretension over every power of 
the government. But this is not all. It presents the chief 
magistrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing away the 
powers of that government over which he has been chosen to 



402 WEBSTER. 

preside ; and adopting for this purpose modes of reasoning 
which, even under the influence of all proper feeling towards 
high official station, it is difficult to regard as respectable. It 
appeals to every prejudice which may betray men into a mis- 
taken view of their own interests, and to every passion which 
may lead them to disobey the impulses of their understanding. 
It urges all the specious topics of State rights and national en- 
croachment against that which a great majority of the States 
have affirmed, to be rightful, and in which all of them have 
acquiesced. It sows, in an unsparing manner, the seeds of 
jealousy and ill-will against that government of which its 
author is the official head. It raises a cry, that liberty is in 
danger, at the very moment when it puts forth claims to powers 
heretofore unknown and unheard of. It affects alarm for the 
public freedom, when nothing endangers that freedom so much 
as its own unparalleled pretences. This, even, is not all. It 
manifestly seeks to inflame the poor against the rich ; it wan- 
tonly attacks whole classes of the people, for the purpose of 
turning against them the prejudices and the resentments of 
other classes. It is a State paper which finds no topic too excit- 
ing for its use, no passion too inflammable for its address and 
its solicitation. 

Such is this message. It remains now for the people of the 
United States. to choose between the principles here avowed 
and their government. These cannot subsist together. The 
one or the other must be rejected. If the sentiments of the 
message shall receive general approbation, the Constitution will 
have perished even earlier than the moment which its enemies 
originally allowed for the termination of its existence. It Avill 
not have survived to its fiftieth year. 



THE SPOILS TO THE VICTOKS. 10 

I begest with the subject of removals from office for opin- 
ion's sake, — one of the most signal instances of the attempt to 
extend executive power. This has been a leading measure, a 
cardinal point, in the course of the administration. It has 
proceeded, from the first, on a settled system of proscription 

10 In the Fall of 1832, a National Republican Convention being held at Wor. 
coster, Massachusetts, Webster addressed the body in a speech of considerable 
length, reviewing the course of the administration. Among the various topics 
urged by him, the Presidential abuse of the power of removal from office was 
justly made prominent. " To the victors belong the spoils " had then grown into 






THE SPOILS TO THE VICTORS. 403 

for political opinions ; and this system it has carried into ope- 
ration to the full extent of its ability. The President has not 
only filled all vacancies with his own friends, generally those 
most distinguished as personal partisans, but he has turned 
out political opponents, and thus created vacancies, in order 
that he might fill them with his own friends. I think the 
number of removals and appointments is said to be two thou- 
sand. While the administration and its friends have been 
attempting to circumscribe and to decry the powers belonging 
to other branches, it has thus seized into its own hands a pat- 
ronage most pernicious and corrupting, an authority over men's 
means of living most tyrannical and odious, and a power to 
punish free men for political opinions altogether intolerable. 

You will remember, Sir, that the Constitution says not one 
word about the President's power of removal from office. It is 
a power raised entirely by construction. It is a constructive 
power, introduced, at first, to meet cases of extreme public 
necessity. It has now become coextensive with the executive 
will, calling for no necessity, requiring no exigency, for its 
exercise ; to be employed at all times, without control, without 
question, without responsibility. When the question of the 
President's power of removal was debated in the first Congress, 
those who argued for it limited it to extreme cases. Cases, they 
said, might arise in which it would be absolutely necessary to 
remove an officer before the Senate could be assembled. An 
officer might become insane ; he might abscond : and from 
these and other supposable cases, it was said, the public service 
might materially suffer, if the President could not remove the 
incumbent. And it was further said, that there was little or no 
danger of the abuse of the power for party or personal objects. 
No President, it was thought, would ever commit such an out- 
rage on public opinion. Mr. Madison, who thought the power 
ought to exist, and to be exercised in cases of high necessity, 
declared, nevertheless, that if a President should resort to the 
power when not required by any public exigency, and merely 
for personal objects, he would deserve to be impeached. By a 
very small majority,— I think, in the Senate, by the cast- 
ing vote of the Vice-President,— Congress decided in favour 

common use as a sort of maxim or proverb suited to the case : I well remember 
having often heard it quoted by the partisans of the President as a just and safe 
rule of action in regard to the official patronage of the government. Probably 
a more immoral and debasing principle was never invoked, to help on the work 
of political corruption; and Webster had good reason to be alarmed at the ex- 
traordinary change of habit thus inaugurated in our National State. The whole 
speech is exceedingly able, of course; but there is, I think, something of special 
cause why the part here given 6hould be kept in mind. 



404 WEBSTER. 

of the existence of the power of removal, upon the grounds 
which I have mentioned ; granting the power in a case of 
clear and absolute necessity, and denying its existence every- 
where else. 

Mr. President, we should recollect that this question was 
discussed, and thus decided, when Washington was in the 
executive chair. Men knew that in his hands the power would 
not be abused ; nor did they conceive it possible that any of his 
successors could so far depart from his great and bright ex- 
ample, as, by the abuse of the power, and by carrying that 
abuse to its utmost extent, to change the essential character of 
the executive from that of an impartial guardian and executor 
of the laws into that of the chief dispenser of party rewards. 
Three or four instances of removal occurred in the first twelve 
years of the government. At the commencement of Mr. Jef- 
ferson's administration, he made several others, not without 
producing much dissatisfaction ; so much so, that he thought 
it expedient to give reasons to the people, in a public paper, for 
even the limited extent to which he had exercised the power. 
He rested his justification on particular circumstances and 
peculiar grounds ; which, whether substantial or not, showed 
at least that he did not regard the power of removal as an 
ordinary power, still less as a mere arbitrary one, to be used 
as he pleased, for whatever ends he pleased, and without 
responsibility. As far as I remember, Sir, after the early part 
of Mr. Jefferson's administration, hardly an instance occurred 
for near thirty years. If there were any instances, they were 
few. But at the commencement of the present administration, 
the precedent of these previous cases was seized on, and a 
system, a regular plan of government, a well-considered scheme 
for the maintenance of party power by the patronage of office, 
and this patronage to be created by general removal, was 
adopted, and has been carried into full operation. Indeed, be- 
fore General Jackson's inauguration, the party put the system 
into practice. In the last session of Mr. Adams's administra- 
tion, the friends of General Jackson constituted a majority in 
the Senate ; and nominations, made by Mr. Adams to fill va- 
cancies which had occurred in the ordinary way, were post- 
poned, by this majority, beyond the third of March, for the pur- 
pose, openly avowed, of giving the nominations to General Jackson. 
A nomination for a Judge of the Supreme Court, and many 
others of less magnitude, were thus disposed of. 

And what did we witness, Sir, when the administration 
actually commenced, in the full exercise of its authority ? One 
universal sweep, one undistinguishing blow, levelled against 
all who were not of the successful part} r . Ko worth, public or 



THE SPOILS TO THE VICTORS. 405 

private, no service, civil or military, was of power to resist the 
relentless greediness of proscription. Soldiers of the late war, 
soldiers of the Revolutionary war, the very contemporaries of 
the liberties of the country, all lost their situations. No office 
was too high, and none too low ; for office was the spoil, and all 
the spoifo, it is said, belong to the victors! If a man, holding an 
office necessary for his daily support, had presented himself 
covered with the scars of wounds received in every battle, from 
Bunker Hill to Yorktown, these would not have protected him 
against this reckless rapacity. Kay, Sir, if Warren himself had 
been among the living, and had possessed any office under gov- 
ernment, high or low, he would not have been suffered to hold 
it a single hour, unless he could show that he had strictly com- 
plied with the party statutes, and had put a well-marked party 
collar round hi<s own neck. Look, Sir, to the case of the late 
venerable Major Melville. He was a personification of the 
spirit of 1776, one of the very first to venture in the cause of lib- 
erty. He was of the Tea-Party ; one of the very first to expose 
himself to British power. And his whole life was consonant 
with this its beginning. Always ardent in the cause of liberty ; 
always a zealous friend to his country ; always acting with the 
party which he supposed cherished the genuine republican 
spirit most fervently ; always estimable and respectable in pri- 
vate life,— he seemed armed against this miserable petty tyr- 
anny of party as far as man could be. But he felt its blow, and 
he fell. He held an office in the custom-house, and had held it 
for a long course of years ; and he was deprived of it, as if un- 
worthy to serve the country which he loved, and for whose 
liberties, in the vigour of his early manhood, he had thrust 
himself into the very jaws of its enemies. There was no mis- 
take in the matter. His character, his standing, his Revolu- 
tionary services, were all well known ; but they were known to 
no purpose ; they weighed not one feather against party preten- 
sions. It cost no pains to remove him ; it cost no compunction 
to wring his aged heart with this retribution from his country 
for his services, his zeal, and his fidelity. Sir, you will bear 
witness that, 1 when his successor was nominated to the Senate, 
and the Senate was told who it was that had been removed to 
make way for that nomination, its members were struck with 
horror. They had not conceived the administration to be capa- 
ble of such a thing ; and yet, they said, What can we do ? The 
man is removed ; we cannot recall him ; we can only act upon 
the nomination before us ? Sir, you and I thought otherwise ; 

1 The Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, Webster's colleague in the Senate at the time 
referred to, was Pi*esident of the Worcester Convention. 



406 WEBSTER. 

and I rejoice that we did think otherwise. We thought it our 
duty to resist the nomination to a vacancy thus created. We 
thought it our duty to oppose this proscription when, and 
where, and as, we constitutionally could. We besought the 
Senate to go with us, and to take a stand before the country on 
this great question. We invoked them to try the deliberate 
sense of the people ; to trust themselves before the tribunal of 
public opinion ; to resist at first, to resist at last, to resist al- 
ways, the introduction of this unsocial, this mischievous, this 
dangerous, this belligerent principle, into the practice of the 
government. 

Mr. President, as far as I know, there is no civilized country 
on Earth, in which, on a change of rulers, there is such an 
inquisition for spoil as we have witnessed in this free republic. 
The Inaugural Address of 1829 spoke of a searching operation of 
government. The most searching operation, Sir, of the present 
administration has been its search for office and place. When, 
Sir, did any English Minister, Whig or Tory, ever make such an 
inquest? When did he ever go down to low-water mark, to 
make an ousting of tide-waiters ? When did he ever take away 
the daily bread of weighers, and gaugers, and measurers ? Or 
when did he go into the villages, to disturb the little post-offices, 
the mail contracts, and any thing else, in the remotest degree 
connected with government? Sir, a British Minister who 
should do this, and should afterwards show his head in a Brit- 
ish House of Commons, would be received by a universal hiss. 

I have little to say of the selections made to fill vacancies thus 
created. It is true, however, — and it is a natural consequence 
of the system which has been acted on,— that, within the last 
three years, more nominations have been rejected on the 
ground of unfitness than in all the preceding forty years of the 
government. And these nominations, you know, Sir, could not 
have been rejected but by votes of the President's own friends. 
The cases were too strong to be resisted. Even party attach- 
ment could not stand them. In some, not a third of the Senate, 
in others not ten votes, and in others not a single vote, could be 
obtained ; and this for no particular reason known only to the 
Senate, but on general grounds of the want of character and 
qualifications ; on grounds known to everybody else, as well as 
to the Senate. All this, Sir, is perfectly natural and consistent. 
The same party selfishness which drives good men out of office 
will push bad men in. Political proscription leads necessarily 
to the filling of offices with incompetent persons, and to a con- 
sequent nial-execution of official duties. And in my opinion, 
Sir, this principle of claiming a monopoly of office by the right 
of conquest, unless the public shall effectually rebuke and 



FRAUDULENT PAETY OUTCRIES. 407 

restrain it, will entirely change the character of our govern- 
ment. It elevates party above country ; it forgets the common 
weal in the pursuit of personal emolument ; it tends to form, it 
does form, we see that it has formed, a political combination, 
united by no common principles or opinions among its mem- 
bers, either upon the powers of the government or the true 
policy of the country ; but held together simply as an associa- 
tion, under the charm of a popular head, seeking to maintain 
possession of the government by a vigorous exercise of its patron- 
age; and for this purpose agitating, and alarming, and distress- 
ing social life by the exercise of a tyrannical party proscription. 
Sir, if this course of things cannot be checked, good men will 
grow tired of the exercise of political privileges. They will 
have nothing to do with popular elections. They will see that 
such elections are but a mere selfish contest for office ; and they 
will abandon the government to the scramble of the bold, the 
daring, and the desperate. 






FRAUDULENT PARTY OUTCRIES. 2 

Sir, there is one other subject on which I wish to raise my 
voice. There is a topic which I perceive is to become the 
general war-cry of party, on which I take the liberty to warn 
the country against delusion. Sir, the cry is to be raised that 
this is a question between the poor and the rich. I know, Sir, 
it has been proclaimed, that one thing was certain, — that there 
was always a hatred on a part of the poor toward the rich ; and 
that this hatred would support the late measures, and the put- 
ting down of the bank. Sir, I will not be silent at the threat of 
such a detestable fraud on public opinion. If but ten men, or 
one man, in the nation will hear my voice, I will still warn them 
against this attempted imposition. 

Mr. President, this is an eventful moment. On the great 

2 From a speech made in the Senate, January 31, 1834. At that time, as Web- 
ster had clearly foreseen and predicted, the Presidential war against the Bank 
of the United States had occasioned a total derangement of the finances of the 
country, and brought on a crisis of unexampled depression and distress in busi- 
ness. In consequence of this, Congress was flooded with memorials from all 
parts of the country, disapproving the course of the government, and imploring 
measures of relief. In order to tide themselves over the crisis, the partisans 
of the administration, both in and out of Congress, fell upon a course of invid- 
ious and inflammatory appeals to popular passion and prejudice. The severe 
rebuke administered by Webster was well deserved, and it is, I think, his high, 
est strain of what may be termed angry eloquence. 



408 WEBSTER. 

questions which occupy us, we all look for some decisive move- 
ment of public opinion. As I wish that movement to be free, 
intelligent, and unbiased, the true manifestation of the public 
will, I desire to prepare the country for another appeal, which 
I perceive is about to be made to popular prejudice, another 
attempt to obscure all distinct views of the public good, to over- 
whelm all patriotism and all enlightened self-interest, by loud 
cries against false danger, and by exciting the passions of one 
class against another. I am not mistaken in the omen; I see the 
magazine whence the weapons of this warfare are to be drawn. 
I already hear the din of the hammering of arms preparatory to 
the combat. They may be such arms, perhaps, as reason and 
justice and honest patriotism cannot resist. Every effort at 
resistance, it is possible, may be feeble and powerless ; but, for 
one, I shall make an effort, — an effort to be begun now, and to 
be carried on and continued, with untiring zeal, till the end of 
the contest comes. 

Sir, I see, in those vehicles which carry to the people senti- 
ments from high places, plain declarations that the present con- 
troversy is but a strife between one part of the community and 
another. I hear it boasted as the unfailing security, the solid 
ground, never to be shaken, on which recent measures rest, that 
the poor naturally hate the rich. I know that, under the cover of 
the roofs of the Capitol, within the last twenty-four hours, 
among men sent here to devise means for the public safety and 
the public good, it has been vaunted forth, as matter of boast 
and triumph, that one cause existed powerful enough to sup- 
port every thing, and to defend every thing ; and that was, the 
natural hatred of the poor to the rich. 

Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of 
attempting a detestable fraud on the community ; a double 
fraud ; a fraud which is to cheat men out of their property and 
out of the earnings of their labour, by first cheating them out 
of their understandings. 

"The natural hatred of the poor to the rich!" Sir, it shall 
not be till the last moment of my existence, — it shall be only 
when I am drawn to the verge of oblivion, when I shall cease to 
have respect or affection for any thing on earth, — that I will 
believe the people of the United States capable of being effect- 
ually deluded, cajoled, and driven about in herds, by such abomi- 
nable frauds as this. If they shall sink to that point ; if they 
so far cease to be men, thinking men, intelligent men, as to 
yield to such pretences and such clamour, — they will be slaves 
already ; slaves to their own passions, slaves to the fraud and 
knavery of pretended friends. They will deserve to be blotted 
out of all the records of freedom ; they ought not to dishonour 



FRAUDULENT PARTY OUTCRIES. 409 

the cause of self-government, by attempting any longer to exer- 
cise it ; they ought to keep their unworthy hands entirely off 
from the cause of republican liberty, if they are capable of 
being the victims of artifices so shallow, of tricks so stale, so 
threadbare, so often practised, so much worn out, on serfs and 
slaves. 

"The natural hatred of the poor against the rich!" "The 
danger of a moneyed aristocracy!" "A power as great and 
dangerous as that resisted by the Revolution!" "A call to a 
new Declaration of Independence!" Sir, I admonish the peo- 
ple against the objects of outcries like these. I admonish every 
industrious labourer in the country to be on his guard against 
such delusion. I tell him the attempt is to play off his passions 
against his interests, and to prevail on him, in the name of lib- 
erty, to destroy all the fruits of liberty ; in the name of patriot- 
ism, to injure and afflict his country ; and, in the name of his 
own independence, to destroy that very independence, and 
make him a beggar and a slave. Has he a dollar? He is ad- 
vised to do that which will destroy half its value. Has he 
hands to labour ? Let him rather fold them, and sit still, than 
be pushed on, by fraud and artifice, to support measures which 
will render his labour useless and hopeless. 

Sir, the very man, of all others, who has the deepest interest 
in a sound currency, and who suffers most by mischievous legis- 
lation in money matters, is the man who earns his daily bread 
by his daily toil. A depreciated currency, sudden changes of 
prices, paper money falling between morning and noon, and 
falling still lower between noon and night,— these things con- 
stitute the very harvest-time of speculators, and of the whole 
race of those who are at once idle and crafty ; and of that ether 
race, too, the Catilines of all times, marked, so as to be known 
for ever by one stroke of the historian's pen, those greedy of other 
men's property and prodigal of their own. Capitalists, too, may 
outlive such times. They may either prey on the earnings of 
labour, by their cent per cent., or they may hoard. But the 
labouring man, what can he hoard? Preying on nobody, he 
becomes the prey of all. His property is in his hands. His re- 
liance, his fund, his productive freehold, his all, is his labour. 
Whether he work on his own small capital or another's, his liv- 
ing is still earned by his industry ; and when the money of the 
country becomes depreciated and debased, whether it be adul- 
terated coin or paper without credit, that industry is robbed of 
its reward. He then labours for a country whose laws cheat 
him out of his bread. I would say to every owner of every 
quarter section of land in the West, I would say to every man 
in the East who follows his own plough, and to every mechanic, 



410 WEBSTER. 

artisan, and labourer, in every city in the country, — I would 
say to every man, everywhere, who wishes, by honest means, 
to gain an honest living, "Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing! 
Whoever attempts, under whatever popular cry, to shake the 
stability of the public currency, bring on distress in money mat- 
ters, and drive the country into paper money, stabs your inter- 
est, and your happiness to the heart." 

The herd of hungry wolves who live on other men's earnings 
will rejoice in such a state of things. A system which absorbs 
into their pockets the fruits of other men's industry is the very 
system for them. A government that produces or countenances 
uncertainty, fluctuations, violent risings and fallings in prices, 
and, finally, paper money, is a government exactly after their 
own heart. Hence these men are always for change. They 
will never let well enough alone. A condition of public affairs 
in which property is safe, industry certain of its reward, and 
every man secure in his own hard-earned gains, is no paradise 
for them. Give them just the reverse of this state of things ; 
bring on change, and change after change ; let it not be known 
to-day what will be the value of property to-morrow ; let no 
man be able to say whether the money in his pockets at night 
will be money or worthless rags in the morning ; and depress 
labour till double work shall earn but half a living, — give them 
this state of things, and you give them the consummation of 
their earthly bliss. 

Sir, the great interest of this country, the producing cause of 
all its prosperity, is labour! labour! labour! We are a labour- 
ing community. A vast majority of us all live by industry and 
actual occupation in some of their forms. The Constitution was 
made to protect this industry, to give it both encouragement 
and security ; but, above all, security. To that very end, and 
with that precise object in view, power was given to Congress 
over the currency, and over the money system of the country. 
In forty years' experience, we have found nothing at all ade- 
quate to the beneficial execution of this trust but a well-con- 
ducted national bank. That has been tried, returned to, tried 
again, and always found successful. If it be not the proper 
thing for us, let it be soberly argued against ; let something bet- 
ter be proposed ; let the country examine the matter coolty, 
and decide for itself. But whoever shall attempt to carry a 
question of this kind by clamour and violence and prejudice ; 
whoever would rouse the people by appeals, false and fraudu- 
lent appeals, to their love of independence, to resist the estab- 
lishment of a useful institution, because it is a bank, and deals 
in money, and who artfully urges these appeals wherever he 
thinks there is more of honest feeling than of enlightened judg- 



THE POSITION" OF MR. CALHOUN". 411 

ment,— means nothing but deception. And whoever has the 
wickedness to conceive, and the hardihood to avow, a purpose 
to break down what has been found, in forty years' experience, 
essential to the protection of all interests, by arraying one class 
against another, and by acting on such a principle as that the 
poor always hate the rich, shows himself the reckless enemy of 
all. An enemy to his whole country, to all classes, and to every 
man in it, he deserves to be marked especially as the poor man's 
curse! 



THE POSITION OF MR. CALHOUN. 3 

Mr. President: The gentleman from South Carolina has 
admonished us to be mindful of the opinions of those who shall 
come after us. We must take our chance, Sir, as to the light in 
which posterity will regard us. I do not decline its judgment, 
nor withhold myself from its scrutiny. Feeling that I am per- 
forming my public duty with singleness of heart and to the best 
of my ability, I fearlessly trust myself to the country, now and 
hereafter, and leave both my motives and my character to its 
decision. 

The gentleman has terminated his speech in a tone of threat 
and defiance towards this bill, even should it become a law of 
the land, altogether unusual in the halls of Congress. But I 
shall not suffer myself to be excited into warmth by his denun- 
ciation of the measure which I support. Among the feelings 
which at this moment fill my breast, not the least is that of 
regret at the position in which the gentleman has placed him- 
self. Sir, he does himself no justice. The cause which he has 
espoused finds no basis in the Constitution, no succour from 

3 This short piece and the one next following are from a speech in the Sen- 
ate, February 1G, 1833. The proper title of the speech is, "The Constitution not 
a Compact between Sovereign States." In November, 1832, the people of South 
Carolina had met, by their delegates, in convention, and settled the principles 
of resistance to the National government. Pursuant to an ordinance adopted 
by that body, the legislature of the State had, afterwards, passed laws organiz- 
ing such resistance, especially in the matter of the tariff. President Jackson, 
whatever errors of policy he had fallen into touching other questions, was just 
the man tor that business; and his motto then was, "The Union,— it must be 
preserved." He called upon Congress for such further legislation as would en- 
able him to meet the exigency. In response to this call, a bill was introduced, 
"further to provide for the Collection of Duties on Imports," commonly called 
" the Force Rill." Calhoun opposed the bill in one of his ablest speeches, bring- 
ing his whole armament of nullification philosophy to bear against it. Webster's 
speech was in reply to Calhoun, and in support of the bill. 



412 



WEBSTER. 



public sympathy, no cheering from a patriotic community. He 
has no foothold on which to stand while he might display the 
powers of his acknowledged talents. Every thing beneath his 
feet is hollow and treacherous. He is like a strong man strug- 
gling in a morass : every effort to extricate himself only sinks 
him deeper and deeper. And I fear the resemblance may be 
carried still further ; I fear that no friend can safely come to 
his relief, that no one can approach near enough to hold out a 
helping hand, without danger of going down himself, also, into 
the bottomless depths of this Serbonian bog. 

The honourable gentleman has declared that on the decision 
of the question now in debate may depend the cause of liberty 
itself. I am. of the same opinion ; but then, Sir, the liberty 
which I think is staked on the contest is not political liberty, 
in any general and undefined character, but our own well- 
understood and long-enjoyed American liberty. 

Sir, I love Liberty no less ardently than the gentleman him- 
self, in whatever form she may have appeared in the progress 
of human history. As exhibited in the master States of antiq- 
uity, as breaking out again from amidst the darkness of the 
Middle Ages, and beaming on the formation of new communi- 
ties in modern Europe, she has, always and everywhere, charms 
for me. Yet, Sir, it is our own liberty, guarded by constitutions 
and secured by union, it is that liberty which is our paternal 
inheritance, it is our established, dear-bought, peculiar Ameri- 
can liberty, to which I am chiefly devoted, and the cause of 
which I now mean, to the utmost of my power, to maintain 
and defend. 



SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION. 



Sir, those who espouse the doctrines of nullification reject, as 
it seems to me, the first great principle of all republican lib- 
erty ; that is, that the majority must govern. In matters of 
common concern, the judgment of a majority must stand as the 
judgment of the whole. This is a law imposed on us by the 
absolute necessity of the case ; and if we do not act upon it, 
there is no possibility of maintaining any government but 
despotism. We hear loud and repeated denunciations against 
what is called majority government. It is declared, with much 
warmth, that a majority government cannot be maintained in 
the United States. What, then, do gentlemen wish ? Do they 
wish to establish a minority government? Do they wish to 
subject the will of the many to the will of the few? The hon- 



SOUTH CAROLINA KULLIFICATTOK". 413 

ourable gentleman from South Carolina has spoken of absolute 
majorities and majorities concurrent; language wholly un- 
known to our Constitution, and to which it is not easy to affix 
definite ideas. As far as I understand it, it would teach us 
that the absolute majority may be found in Congress, but the 
majority concurrent must be looked for in the States ; that is 
to say, Sir, stripping the matter of this novelty of phrase, that 
the dissent of one or more States, as States, renders void the 
decision of a majority of Congress, so far as that State is con- 
cerned. And so this doctrine, running but a short career, like 
other dogmas of the day, terminates in nullification. 

If this vehement invective against majorities meant no more 
than that, in the construction of government, it is wise to 
provide checks and balances, so that there should be various 
limitations on the power of the mere majority, it would only 
mean what the Constitution of the United States has already 
abundantly provided. It is full of such checks and balances. 
In its very organization, it adopts a broad and most effectual 
principle in restraint of the power of mere majorities. A 
majority of the people elects the House of representatives, but 
it does not elect the Senate. The Senate is elected by the 
States, each State having, in this respect, an equal power. No 
law, therefore, can pass, without the assent of a majority of 
the representatives of the people, and a majority of the repre- 
sentatives of the States also. A majority of the representa- 
tives of the people and a majority of the States must concur, in 
every Act of Congress ; and the President is elected on a plan 
compounded of both these principles. But, having composed 
one House of representatives chosen by the people in each 
State, according to its numbers, and the other, of an equal 
number of members from every State, whether larger or 
smaller, the Constitution gives to majorities in these Houses, 
thus constituted, the full and entire power of passing laws, 
subject always to the constitutional restrictions, and to the 
approval of the President. To subject them to any other 
power is clear usurpation. The majority of one House may be 
controlled by the majority of the other ; and both may be 
restrained by the President's negative. These are checks and 
balances provided by the Constitution, existing in the govern- 
ment itself, and wisely intended to secure deliberation and 
caution in legislative proceedings. But to resist the will of the 
majority in both Houses, thus constitutionally exercised ; to 
insist on the lawfulness of interposition by an extraneous 
power ; to claim the right of defeating the will of Congress, by 
setting up against it the will of a single State,— is neither more 
nor less, as it strikes me, than a plain attempt to overthrow the 



414 WEBSTER. 

government. The constituted authorities of the United States 
are no longer a government, if they be not masters of their own 
will ; they are no longer a government, if an external power 
may arrest their proceedings ; they are no longer a govern- 
ment, if Acts passed by both Houses, and approved by the 
President, may be nullified by State vetoes or State ordinances. 
Does any one suppose it could make any difference, as to the 
binding authority of an Act of Congress, and of the duty of a 
State to respect it, whether it passed by a mere majority of 
both Houses, or by three fourths of each, or the unanimous 
vote of each ? Within the limits and restrictions of the Consti- 
tution, the government of the United States, like all other pop- 
ular governments, acts by majorities. It can act no otherwise. 
Whoever, therefore, denounces the government of majorities, 
denounces the government of his own country, and denounces 
all free governments. And whoever would restrain these 
majorities, while acting within their constitutional limits, by an 
external power, whatever he may intend, asserts principles 
which, if adopted, can lead to nothing else than the destruction 
of the government itself. 

Does not the gentleman perceive, Sir, how his argument 
against majorities might here be retorted upon him? Does he 
not see how cogently he might be asked, whether it be the 
character of nullification to practise what it preaches ? Look to 
South Carolina, at the present moment. How far are the rights 
of minorities there respected ? I confess, Sir, I have not known, 
in peaceable times, the power of the majority carried with a 
higher hand, or upheld with more relentless disregard of the 
rights, feelings, and principles of the minority; — a minority 
embracing, as the gentleman himself will admit, a large portion 
of the worth and respectability of the State ; a minority com- 
prehending in its numbers men who have been associated with 
him, and with us, in these halls of legislation ; men who have 
served their country at home and honoured it abroad ; men 
who would cheerfully lay down their lives for their native 
State, in any cause which they could regard as the cause of 
honour and duty ; men above fear, and above reproach ; whose 
deepest grief and distress spring from the conviction, that the 
present proceedings of the State must ultimately reflect dis- 
credit upon her. How is this minority, how are these men, re- 
garded? They are enthralled and disfranchised by ordinances 
and Acts of legislation ; subjected to tests and oaths incompat- 
ible, as they conscientiously think, with oaths already taken, 
and obligations already assumed : they are proscribed and de- 
nounced, as recreants to duty and patriotism, and slaves to a 
foreign power. Both the spirit which pursues them, and the 



SOUTH CAKOLINA NULLIFICATION. 415 

positive measures which emanate from that spirit, are harsh 
and proscriptive, beyond all precedent within my knowledge, 
except in periods of professed revolution. 

It is not, Sir, one would think, for those who approve these 
proceedings to complain of the power of majorities. 

[Nullification, Sir, is as distinctly revolutionary as secession ; 
but I cannot say that the revolution which it seeks is one of so 
respectable a character. Secession would, it is true, abandon 
the Constitution altogether ; but then it would profess to aban- 
don it. Whatever other inconsistencies it might run into, one, 
at least, it would avoid. It would not belong to a government, 
while it rejected its authority. It would not repel the burden, 
and continue to enjoy the benefits. It would not aid in passing 
laws which others are to obey, and yet reject their authority 
as to itself. It would not undertake to reconcile obedience 
to public authority with an asserted right of command over 
that same authority. It would not be in the government, 
and above the government, at the same time. But though 
secession may be a more respectable mode of attaining the ob- 
ject than nullification, it is not more truly revolutionary. Each, 
and both, resist the constitutional authorities ; each, and both, 
would sever the Union, and subvert the government. 

Mr. President, I will not now examine, at length, the ordi- 
nance and laws of South Carolina. These papers are well drawn 
for their purpose. Their authors understood their own objects. 
They are called a peaceable remedy, and we have been told that 
South Carolina, after all, intends nothing but a lawsuit. A 
very few words, Sir, will show the nature of this peaceable 
remedy, and of the lawsuit which South Carolina contemplates. 

In the first place, the ordinance declares the law of last July, 
and all other laws of the United States laying duties, to be ab- 
solutely null and void, and makes it unlawful for the consti- 
tuted authorities of the United States to enforce the payment 
of such duties. It is therefore, Sir, an indictable offence, at 
this moment, in South Carolina, for any person to be concerned 
in collecting revenue under the laws of the United States. It 
being declared, by what is considered a fundamental law of the 
State, unlawful to collect these duties, an indictment lies, of 
course, against any one concerned in such collection ; and he is, 
on general principles, liable to be punished by fine and impris- 
onment. The terms, it is true, are, that it is unlawful "to 
enforce the payment of duties"; but every custom-house offi- 
cer enforces payment while he detains the goods in order to 
obtain such payment. The ordinance, therefore, reaches every- 
body concerned in the collection of the duties. 



41 G WEBSTER. 

This is the first step in the prosecution of the peaceable 
remedy. The second is more decisive. By the Act commonly 
called the replevin law, any person, whose goods are seized or 
detained by the collector for the payment of duties, may sue 
out a writ of replevin, and, by virtue of that writ, the goods are 
to be restored to him. A writ of replevin is a writ which the 
sheriff is bound to execute, and for the execution of which he is 
bound to employ force, if necessary. He may call out the posse, 
and must do so, if resistance be made. This posse may be armed 
or unarmed. It may come forth with military array, and under 
the lead of military men. Whatever number of troops may be 
assembled in Charleston, they may be summoned, with the 
governor, or commander-in-chief, at their head, to come in aid 
of the sheriff. It is evident, then, Sir, that the whole military 
power of the State is to be employed, whenever necessary, in 
dispossessing the custom-house officers, and in seizing and 
holding the goods, without paying the duties. This is the sec- 
ond step in the peaceable remedy. 

Sir, whatever pretences may be set up to the contrary, this is 
the direct application of force, and of military force. It is un- 
lawful, in itself, to replevy goods in the custody of the collect- 
ors. But this unlawful act is to be done, and it is to be done by 
power. Here is a plain interposition, by physical force, to 
resist the laws of the Union. The legal mode of collecting 
duties is to detain the goods till such duties are paid or secured. 
But force comes, and overpowers the collector and his assist- 
ants, and takes away the goods, leaving the duties unpaid. 
There cannot be a clearer case of forcible resistance to law. 
And it is provided that the goods thus seized shall be held 
against any attempt to retake them, by the same force which 
seized them. 

Having thus dispossessed the officers of the government of 
the goods, without payment of duties, and seized and secured 
them by the strong arm of the State, only one thing more re- 
mains to be done, and that is, to cut off all possibility of legal 
redress ; and that, too, is accomplished, or thought to be accom- 
plished. The ordinance declares that all judicial proceedings, 
founded on the revenue laws, (including, of course, proceedings in 
the courts of the United States,) shall be null and void. This 
nullifies the judicial power of the United States. Then comes 
the test-oath Act. This requires all State judges and jurors in 
the State courts to swear that they will execute the ordinance, 
and all Acts of the legislature passed in pursuance thereof. 
The ordinance declares that no appeal shall be allowed from 
the decision of the State courts to the Supreme Court of the 
United States ; and the replevin Act makes it an indictable 



SOUTH C AEOLUS' A NULLIFICATION. 417 

offence for any clerk to furnish a copy of the record, for the 
purpose of such appeal. 

The two principal provisions on which South Carolina relies, 
to resist the laws of the United States, and nullify the authority 
of this government, are, therefore, these : 

1. A forcible seizure of goods, before duties are paid or se- 
cured, by the power of the State, civil and military. 

2. The taking away, by the most effectual means in her power, 
of all legal redress in the courts of the United States ; the con- 
fining of judicial proceedings to her own State tribunals ; and 
the compelling of her judges and jurors of these her own courts 
to take an oath, beforehand, that they will decide all cases 
according to the ordinance, and the Acts passed under it ; that 
is, that they will decide the cause one way. They do not swear 
to try it, on its own merits ; they only swear to decide it as nulli- 
fication requires. 

The character, Sir, of these provisions defies comment. Their 
object is as plain as their means are extraordinary. They pro- 
pose direct resistance, by the whole power of the State, to laws 
of Congress, and cut off, by methods deemed adequate, any 
redress by legal and judicial authority. They arrest legislation, 
defy the executive, and banish the judicial power of this gov- 
ernment. They authorize and command acts to be done, and 
done by force, both of numbers and of arms, which, if done, 
and done by force, are clearly acts of rebellion and treason. 

Such, Sir, are the laws of South Carolina ; such, Sir, is the 
peaceable remedy of nullification. Has not nullification reached, 
even thus early, that point of direct and forcible resistance to 
law to which I intimated, three years ago, it plainly tended ? 

And now, Mr. President, what is the reason for passing laws 
like these ? What are the oppressions experienced under the 
Union, calling for measures which thus threaten to sever and 
destroy it? What invasion of public liberty, what ruin to 
private happiness, what long list of rights violated, or wrongs 
unredressed, is to justify to the country, to posterity, and to 
the world, this assault upon the free Constitution of the United 
States, this great and glorious work of our fathers ? At this 
very moment, Sir, the whole land smiles in peace, and rejoices 
in plenty. A general and a high prosperity pervades the coun- 
try ; and, judging by the common standard, by increase of popu- 
lation and wealth, or judging by the opinions of that portion of 
her people not embarked in these dangerous and desperate 
measures, this prosperity overspreads South Carolina herself. 

Thus happy at home, our country, at the same time, holds 
high the character of her institutions, her power, her rapid 
growth, and her future destiny, in the eyes of all foreign States. 



418 WEBSTER. 

One danger only creates hesitation ; one doubt only exists, to 
darken the otherwise unclouded brightness of that aspect 
which she exhibits to the view and to the admiration of the 
world. Need I say, that that doubt respects the permanency of 
our Union ? and need I say, that that doubt is now caused, 
more than by any thing else, by these very proceedings of 
South Carolina? Sir, all Europe is at this moment beholding 
us, and looking for the issue of this controversy ; those who 
hate free institutions, with malignant hope ; those who love 
them, with deep anxiety and shivering fear. 

The cause, then, Sir, the cause! Let the world know the 
cause which has thus induced one State of the Union to bid de- 
fiance to the power of the whole, and openly to talk of secession. 
Sir, the world will scarcely believe that this whole controversy, 
and all the desperate measures which its support requires, have 
no other foundation than a difference of opinion upon a pro- 
vision of the Constitution, between a majority of the people of 
South Carolina, on one side, and a vast majority of the whole 
people of the United States, on the other. It will not credit the 
fact, it will not admit the possibility, that, in an enlightened 
age, in a free, popular republic, under a Constitution where the 
people govern, as they must always govern, under such systems, 
by majorities, at a time of unprecedented happiness, without 
practical oppression, without evils such as may not only be pre- 
tended, but felt and experienced, — evils not slight or tempo- 
rary, but deep, permanent, and intolerable, — a single State 
should rush into conflict with all the rest, attempt to put down 
the power of the Union by her own laws, and to support those 
laws by her military power, and thus break up and destrpy the 
world's last hope. And well the world may be incredulous. 
"We, who see and hear it, can ourselves hardly yet believe it. 
Even after all that had preceded it, this ordinance struck the 
country with amazement. It was incredible and inconceivable 
that South Carolina should thus plunge headlong into resistance 
to the laws on a matter of opinion, and on a question in which 
the preponderance of opinion, both of the present day and of 
all past time, was so overwhelmingly against her. The ordi- 
nance declares that Congress has exceeded its just power by 
laying duties on imports intended for the protection of manu- 
factures. This is the opinion of South Carolina ; and on the 
strength of this opinion she nullifies the laws. Yet has the rest 
of the country no right to its opinion also ? Is one State to sit 
sole arbitress ? She maintains that those laws are plain, delib- 
erate, and palpable violations of the Constitution ; that she has 
a sovereign right to decide this matter ; and that, having so de- 
cided, she is authorized to resist their execution by her own 



SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION. 419 

sovereign power ; and she declares that she will resist it, though 
such resistance should shatter the Union into atoms. 

Mr. President, I do not intend to discuss the propriety of 
these laws at large ; but I will ask, How are they shown to be 
thus plainly and palpably unconstitutional? Have they no 
countenance at all in the Constitution itself ? Are they quite 
new in the history of the government ? Are they a sudden and 
violent usurpation on the rights of the States ? Sir, what will 
the civilized world say, what will posterity say, when they learn 
that similar laws have existed from the very foundation of the 
government ; that for thirty years the power was never ques- 
tioned ; and that no State in the Union has more freely and un- 
equivocally admitted it than South Carolina herself ? 

It is, Sir, only within a few years that Carolina has denied the 
constitutionality of these protective laws. The gentleman him- 
self has narrated to us the true history of her proceedings on 
this point. He says that, after the passing of the law of 1828, 
despairing then of being able to abolish the system of protec- 
tion, political men went forth among the people, and set up the 
doctrine that the system was unconstitutional. "And the peo- 
ple," says the honourable gentleman, "received the doctrine" 
This, I believe, is true, Sir. The people did then receive the 
doctrine ; they had never entertained it before. Down to that 
period, the constitutionality of these laws had been no more 
doubted in South Carolina than elsewhere. And I suspect it is 
true, Sir, and I deem it a great misfortune, that, to the present 
moment, a great portion of the people of the State have never 
yet seen more than one side of the argument. I believe that 
thousands of honest men are involved in scenes now passing, 
led away by one-sided views of the question, and following 
their leaders by the impulses of an unlimited confidence. De- 
pend upon it, Sir, if we can avoid the shock of arms, a day for 
reconsideration and reflection will come ; truth and reason will 
act with their accustomed force, and the public opinion of South 
Carolina will be restored to its usual constitutional and patriotic 
tone. 

But, Sir, I hold South Carolina to her ancient, her cool, her 
uninfluenced, her deliberate opinions. I hold her to her own 
admissions, nay, to her own claims and pretensions, in 1789, in 
the first Congress, and to her acknowledgments and avowed 
sentiments through a long series of succeeding years. I hold 
her to the principles on which she led Congress to act in 1816 ; 
or, if she have changed her own opinions, I claim some respect 
for those who still retain the same opinions. I say she is pre- 
cluded from asserting that doctrines, which she has herself so 



420 WEBSTER. 

long and so ably sustained, are plain, palpable, and dangerous 
violations of the Constitution. 

Mr. President, if the friends of nullification should be able to 
propagate their opinions, and give them practical effect, they 
would, in my judgment, prove themselves the most skilful 
"architects of ruin," the most effectual extinguishers of high- 
raised expectation, the greatest blasters of human hopes, that 
any age has produced. They would stand up to proclaim, in 
tones that would pierce the ears of half the human race, that 
the last great experiment of representative government had 
failed. They would send forth sounds, at the hearing of which 
the doctrine of the divine right of kings would feel, even in its 
grave, a returning sensation of vitality and resuscitation. Mill- 
ions of eyes, of those who now feed their inherent love of lib- 
erty on the success of the American example, would turn away 
from beholding our dismemberment, and find no place on Earth 
whereon to rest their gratified sight. Amidst the incantations 
and orgies of nullification, secession, disunion, and revolution, 
would be celebrated the funeral rites of constitutional and 
republican liberty. 

But, Sir, if the government do its duty, if it act with firmness 
and with moderation, these opinions cannot prevail. Be as- 
sured, Sir, be assured, that, among the political sentiments of 
this people, the love of union is still uppermost. They will 
stand fast by the Constitution, and by those who defend it. I 
rely on no temporary expedients, on no political combinations ; 
but I rely on the true American feeling, the genuine patriotism 
of the people, and the imperative decision of the public voice. 
Disorder and confusion indeed may arise ; scenes of commotion 
and contest are threatened, and perhaps may come. "With my 
whole heart, I pray for the continuance of the domestic peace 
and quiet of the country. I desire, most ardently, the restora- 
tion of affection and harmony to all its parts. I desire that 
every citizen of the whole country may look to this government 
with no other sentiments but those of grateful respect and at- 
tachment. But I cannot yield, even to kind feelings, the cause 
of the Constitution, the true glory of the country, and the 
great trust which we hold in our hands for succeeding ages. If 
the Constitution cannot be maintained without meeting these 
scenes of commotion and contest, however unwelcome, they 
must come. We cannot, we must not, we dare not, omit to do 
that which, in our judgment, the safety of the Union requires. 
!N"ot regardless of consequences, we must yet meet conse- 
quences ; seeing the hazards which surround the discharge of 
public duty, it must yet be discharged. For myself, Sir, I shun 
no responsibility justly devolving on me, here or elsewhere, in 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 421 

attempting to maintain the cause. I am tied to it by indisso- 
luble bands of affection and duty, and 1 shall cheerfully partake 
in its fortunes and its fate. I am ready to perform my own ap- 
propriate part, whenever and wherever the occasion may call on 
me, and to take my chance among those upon whom blows may 
fall first and fall thickest. I shall exert every faculty I possess 
in aiding to prevent the Constitution from being nullified, de- 
stroyed, or impaired ; and even should I see it fall, I will still, 
with a voice feeble, perhaps, but earnest as ever issued from 
human lips, and with fidelity and zeal which nothing shall extin- 
guish, call on the people to come to its rescue. 4 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 5 

Mr. President: I feel the magnitude of this question. We 
are coming to a vote which cannot fail to produce important 
effects on the character of the Senate and the character of the 
government. 

Unhappily, Sir, the Senate finds itself involved in a contro- 

4 Pending the discussion of the Force Bill, a member of the President's Cab- 
inet called on Webster at his lodgings, and earnestly requested him to take an 
active part in the defence of that measure. Some time before, Calhoun had 
resigned the Vice-Presidency, and been elected to the Senate, as the only man 
fully able to maintain the cause pf South Carolina in Congress. Early in the 
debate, several of the President's friends in the Senate attacked the bill with 
great severity, and were thrown into dismay when Webster declared his posi- 
tion; which he did in the following terms: "lam no man's leader; and, on the 
other hand, I follow no lead but that of public duty and the star of the Constitu- 
tion. I believe the country is in considerable danger; I believe an unlawful 
combination threatens the integrity of the Union. I believe the crisis calls for 
a mild, temperate, forbearing, but inflexibly firm execution of the laws; and, 
under this conviction, I give a hearty support to the administration in all meas- 
ures which I deem to be fair, just, and necessary." 

5 In the Fall of 1833, President Jackson "assumed the responsibility" of 
removing the public deposits from the Bank of the United States, where they 
had been placed by law. Before doing this, however, he found himself under 
the necessity of removing from office the Secretary of the Treasury, who 
declined to execute his will in that behalf. At last, having put at the head 
of the Treasury a man who was ready to do his bidding, he gave a peremptory 
order for the removal. This was the most daring and high-handed of all his 
measures against the bank, and was followed by most disastrous consequences 
to the business of the country. [See page 407, note 2.] On the 28th March, 1834, 
the Senate adopted a resolution, censuring the President's action in that re- 
moval. On the 17th of April, the President forwarded to the Senate an elaborate 
Protest against that resolution. That protest drew from Webster, on the 17th 
of May, the following superb speech, which I give entire. 



422 WEBSTEE. 

versy with the President of the United States ; a man who has 
rendered most distinguished services to his country, has hith- 
erto possessed a degree of popular favour perhaps never ex- 
ceeded, and whose honesty of motive and integrity of purpose 
are still admitted by those who maintain that his administration 
has fallen into lamentable errors. 

On some of the interesting questions in regard to which the 
President and Senate hold opposite opinions, the more popular 
branch of the legislature concurs with the executive. It is not 
to be concealed that the Senate is engaged against imposing 
odds. It can sustain itself only by its own prudence and the 
justice of its cause. It has no patronage by which to secure 
friends ; it can raise up no advocates through the dispensation 
of favours, for it has no favours to dispense. Its very consti- 
tution, as a body whose members are elected for a long term, is 
capable of being rendered obnoxious, and is daily made the 
subject of opprobrious remark. It is already denounced as 
independent of the people, and aristocratic. Nor is it, like the 
other House, powerful in its numbers ; not being, like that, so 
large as that its members come constantly in direct and sympa- 
thetic contact with the whole people. Under these disadvan- 
tages, Sir, which, we may be assured, will be pressed and urged 
to the utmost length, there is but one course for us. The 
Senate must stand on its rendered reasons. It must put forth 
the grounds of its proceedings, and it must then rely on the 
intelligence and patriotism of the people to carry it through the 
contest. 

As an individual member of the Senate, it gives me great 
pain to be engaged in such a conflict with the executive govern- 
ment. The occurrences of the last session are fresh in the recol- 
lection of us all ; arid, having felt it to be my duty, at that time, 
to give my cordial support to highly important measures of the 
administration, I ardently hoped that nothing might occur to 
place me afterwards in an attitude of opposition. In all re- 
spects, and in every way, it would have been far more agree- 
able to me to have found nothing in the measures of the exec- 
utive government which I could not cheerfully support. The 
present occasion of difference has not been sought or made by 
me. It is thrust upon me, in opposition to strong opinions and 
wishes, on my part not concealed. The interference with the 
public deposits dispelled all hope of continued concurrence 
with the administration, and was a measure so uncalled-for, so 
unnecessary, and, in my judgment, so illegal and indefensible, 

6 Alluding to the speaker's course in reference to "The Force Bill." See 
page 421, noto 4. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 423 

that, with whatever reluctance it might be opposed, opposition 
was unavoidable. 

The paper before us has grown out of the consequences of 
this interference. It is a paper which cannot be treated with 
indifference. The doctrines which it advances, the circumstan- 
ces which have attended its transmission to the Senate, and the 
manner in which the Senate may now dispose of it, will form a 
memorable era in the history of the government. We are 
either to enter it on our journals, assent to its sentiments, and 
submit to its rebuke, or we must answer it, with the respect due 
to the chief magistrate, but with such animadversion on its 
doctrines as they deserve, and with the firmness imposed upon 
us by our public duties. 

I shall proceed, then, Sir, to consider the circumstances 
which gave rise to this Protest ; to examine the principles 
which it attempts to establish ; and to compare those principles 
with the Constitution and the laws. 

On the 28th day of March, the Senate adopted a resolution 
declaring that, "in the late executive proceedings in relation to 
the public revenue, the President had assumed a power not 
conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of 
both." In that resolution I concurred. 

It is not a direct question, now again before us, whether the 
President really had assumed such illegal power : that point is 
decided, so far as the Senate ever can decide it. But the Pro- 
test denies that, supposing the President to have assumed 
such illegal power, the Senate could properly pass the resolu- 
tion ; or, what is the same thing, it denies that the Senate 
could, in this way, express any opinion about it. It denies that 
the Senate has any right, by resolution, in this or any other 
case, to express disapprobation of the President's conduct, let 
that conduct be what it may; and this, one of the leading 
doctrines of the Protest, I propose to consider. But, as I con- 
curred in the resolution of the 28th of March, and did not 
trouble the Senate, at that time, with any statement of my own 
reasons, I will avail myself of this opportunity to explain, 
shortly, what those reasons were. 

In the first place, then, I have to say, that I did not vote for 
the resolution on the mere ground of the removal of Mr. Duane 
from the office of Secretary of the Treasury. Although I 
disapprove of the removal altogether, yet the power of removal 
does exist in the President, according to the established con- 
struction of the Constitution ; and therefore, although in a 
particular case it may be abused, and, in my opinion, was 
abused in this case, yet its exercise cannot be justly said to be 
an assumption or usurpation. We must all agree that Mr. 



424 WEBSTER. 

Duane is out of office. He has, therefore, been removed by a 
power constitutionally competent to remove him, whatever may 
be thought of the exercise of that power under the circum- 
stances of the case. 

If, then, the act of removing the Secretary be not the assump- 
tion of power which the resolution declares, in what is that as- 
sumption found ? Before giving a precise answer to this inquiry, 
allow me to recur to some of the principal previous events. 

At the end of the last session of Congress, the public moneys 
of the United States were still in their proper place. That 
place was fixed by the law of the land, and no power of change 
was conferred on any other human being than the Secretary of 
the Treasury. On him the power of change was conferred, to 
be exercised by himself, if emergency should arise, and to be 
exercised for reasons which he was bound to lay before Con- 
gress. No other officer of the government had the slightest 
pretence of authority to lay his hand on these moneys for the 
purpose of changing the place of their custody. All the other 
heads of departments together could not touch them. The 
President could not touch them. The power of change was a 
trust confided to the discretion of the Secretary, and to his dis- 
cretion alone. The President had no more authority to take 
upon himself this duty, thus assigned expressly by law to the 
Secretary, than he had to make the annual report to Congress, 
or the annual commercial statements, or to perform any other 
service which the law specially requires of the Secretary. He 
might just as well sign the warrants for moneys, in the ordinary 
daily disbursements of government, instead of the Secretary. 
The statute had assigned the especial duty of removing the 
deposits, if removed at all, to the Secretary of the Treasury, 
and to him alone. The consideration of the propriety or ne- 
cessity of removal must be the consideration of the Secretary ; 
the decision to remove, his decision ; and the act of removal, 
his act. 

Now, Sir, on the 18th day of September last, a resolution was 
taken to remove these deposits from their legislative, that is to 
say, their legal custody. Whose resolution was this ? On the 
1st day of October, they were removed. By whose power was 
this done f The papers necessary to accomplish the removal 
(that is, the orders and drafts) are, it is true, signed by the 
Secretary. The President's name is not subscribed to them ; 
nor does the Secretary, in any of them, recite or declare that 
he does the act by direction of the President, or on the Presi- 
dent's responsibility. In form, the whole proceeding is the 
proceeding of the Secretary, and, as such, had the legal effect. 
The deposits were removed. But whose act was it, in truth 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 425 

and reality? "Whose will accomplished it? On whose respon- 
sibility was it adopted ? 

These questions are all explicitly answered by the President 
himself, in the paper, under his own hand, read to the Cabinet 
on the 18th of September, and published by his authority. In 
this paper the President declares, in so many words, that he 
begs his Cabinet to consider the proposed measure as his own ; 
that its responsibility has been assumed by him ; and that he 
names the first day of October as a period proper for its 
execution. 

Now, Sir, it is precisely this which I deem an assumption of 
power not conferred by the Constitution and laws. I think the 
law did not give this authority to the President, nor impose on 
him the responsibility of its exercise. It is evident that, in this 
removal, the Secretary was in reality nothing but the scribe : 
he was the pen in the President's hand, and no more. Nothing 
depended on his discretion, his judgment, or his responsibility. 
The removal indeed has been admitted and defended in the 
Senate, as the direct act of the President himself. This, Sir, is 
what I call assumption of power. If the President had issued 
an order for the removal of the deposits in his own name, and 
under his own hand, it would have been an illegal order, and 
the bank would not have been at liberty to obey it. For the 
same reason, if the Secretary's order had recited that it was 
issued by the President's direction, and on the President's 
authority, it would have shown, on its face, that it was illegal 
and invalid. No one can doubt that. The act of removal, to 
be lawful, must be the bona fide act of the Secretary ; Ms judg- 
ment, the result of his deliberations, the volition of Ms mind. 
All are able to see the difference between the power to remove 
the Secretary from office and the power to control him, in all or 
any of his duties, while in office. The law charges the officer, 
whoever he may be, with the performance of certain duties. 
The President, with the consent of the Senate, appoints an 
individual to be such officer; and this individual he may re- 
move, if he so please ; but, until removed, he is the officer, and 
remains charged with the duties of his station, — duties which 
nobody else can perform, and for the neglect or violation of 
which he is liable to be impeached. 

The distinction is visible and broad between the power of re- 
moval and the power to control an officer not removed. The 
President, it is true, may terminate his political life ; but he 
cannot control his powers and functions, and act upon him as a 
machine, while he is allowed to live. This power of control and 
direction, nowhere given, certainly, by any express provision of 
the Constitution or laws, is derived, by those who maintain it, 



426 WEBSTER. 

from the right of removal ; that is to say. it is a constructive 
power. But the right of removal itself is but a constructive 
power ; it has no express warrant in the Constitution. A very 
important power, then, is raised by construction in the first 
place ; and, being thus raised, it becomes a fountain out of 
Avhieh other important powers, raised also by construction, are 
to be supplied. There is no little danger that such a mode of 
reasoning may be carried too far. It cannot be maintained that 
the power of direct control necessarily flows from the power of 
removal. Suppose it had been decided in 1789, when the ques- 
tion was debated, that the President does not possess the 
power of removal: will it be contended that, in that case, his 
right of interference with the acts and duties of executive offi- 
cers would be less than it now is ? The reason of the thing 
would seem to be the other way. If the President may remove 
an incumbent when he becomes satisfied of his unfaithfulness 
and incapacity, there would appear to be less necessity to give 
him also a right of control, than there would be if he could not 
remove him. ; 

We may try this question by supposing it to arise in a judi- 
cial proceeding. If the Secretary of the Treasury were im- 
peached for removing the deposits, could he justify himself by 
saying that he did it by the President's direction? If he could, 
then no executive officer could ever be impeached, who obeys 
the President ; and the whole notion of making such officers 
impeachable at all would be farcical. If he could not so justify 
himself, (and all will allow he could not,) the reason can only 
be, that the act of removal is his own act ; the power, a power 
confided to him, for the just exercise of which the law looks to 
his discretion, his honesty, and his direct responsibility. 

Xow, Sir, the President wishes the world to understand that 
he himself decided on the question of the removal of the de- 
posits ; that he took the whole of the measure upon himself ; 
that he wished it to be considered his own act ; that he not only 
himself decided that the thing should be done, but regulated its 
details also, and named the day for carrying it into effect. 

I have always entertained a very erroneous view of the par- 
tition of powers, and of the true nature of official responsibility 
under our Constitution, if this be not a plain case of the as- 
sumption of power. 

The legislature had fixed a place, by law, for the keeping of 
the public money. They had, at the same time, and by the 
same law, created and conferred a power of removal, to be exer- 
cised contingently. This power they had vested in the Secre- 
tary, by express words. The law did not say that the deposits 
should be made in the bank, unless the President should order 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 427 

otherwise ; but it did say that they should be made there, un- 
less the Secretary of the Treasury should order otherwise. I 
put it to the plain sense and common candour of all men, 
whether the discretion which was thus to be rxercised over the 
subject was not the Secretary's own personal discretion ; and 
whether, therefore, the interposition of the authority of another, 
acting directly and conclusively on the subject, deciding the 
whole question, even in its particulars and details, be not an 
assumption of power. 

The Senate regarded this interposition as an encroachment 
by the executive on other branches of the government ; as an 
interference with the legislative disposition of the public treas- 
ure. It was strongly and forcibly urged, yesterday, by the hon- 
ourable member from South Carolina, that the true and only 
mode of preserving any balance of power, in mixed govern- 
ments, is to keep an exact balance. This is very true ; and to 
this end encroachment must be resisted at the first step. The 
question is, therefore, whether, upon the true principles of the 
Constitution, this exercise of power by the President can be 
justified. Whether the consequences be prejudicial or not, if 
there be an illegal exercise of power, it is to be resisted in the 
proper manner. Even if no harm or inconvenience result from 
transgressing the boundary, the intrusion is not to be suffered 
to pass unnoticed. Every encroachment, great or small, is im- 
portant enough to awaken the attention of those who are 
intrusted with the preservation of a constitutional government. 
We are not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the gov- 
ernment is overthrown, or liberty itself put in extreme jeopardy. 
We should not be worthy sons of our fathers, were we so to 
regard great questions affecting the general freedom. Those 
fathers accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of 
principle; The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to 
tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever ; and it was precisely 
on this question that they made the Revolution turn. The 
amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was incon- 
sistent with liberty ; and that was, in their eyes, enough. It 
was against the recital of an Act of Parliament, rather than 
against any suffering under its enactments, that they took up 
arms. They went to war against a preamble. They fought 
seven years against a declaration. They poured out their 
treasures and their blood like water, in a contest in opposition 
to an assertion which those less sagacious and not so well 
schooled in the principles of civil liberty would have regarded 
as barren phraseology, or mere parade of words. They saw in 
the claim of the British Parliament a seminal principle of mis- 
chief, the germ of unjust power ; they detected it, dragged it 



428 



WEBSTEK. 



forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it ; nor 
did it elude either their steady eye or their well-directed blow 
till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the smallest fibre. 
On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet 
afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to which, for 
purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the 
height of her glory, is not to be compared ; a power which has 
dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions 
and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the 
Sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the Earth 
daily with one continuous and' unbroken strain of the martial 
airs of England. 

The necessity of holding strictly to the principle upon which 
free governments are constructed, and to the precise lines 
which fix the partitions of power between different branches, is 
as plain, if not as cogent, as that of resisting, as our fathers did, 
the strides of the parent country upon the rights of the Colo- 
nies ; because, whether the power which exceeds its just limits 
be foreign or domestic, whether it be the encroachment of all 
branches on the rights of the people, or that of one branch on 
the rights of others, in either case the balanced and well- 
adjusted machinery of free government is disturbed, and, if the 
derangement go on, the whole system must fall. 

But the case before us is not a case of merely theoretic in- 
fringement ; nor is it one of trifling importance. Ear otherwise. 
It respects one of the highest and most important of all the 
powers Of government ; that is to say, the custody and control 
of the public money. The act of removing the deposits, which 
I now consider as the President's act, and which his friends 
on this floor defend as his act, took the national purse from 
beneath the security and guardianship of the law, and disposed 
of its contents, in parcels, in such places of deposit as he chose 
to select. At this very moment, every dollar of the public 
treasure is subject, so far as respects its custody and safe-keep- 
ing, to his unlimited control. We know not where it is to-day ; 
still less do we know where it may be to-morrow. 

But, Mr. President, this is not all. There is another part of 
the case, which has not been so much discussed, but which ap- 
pears to me to be still more indefensible in its character. It is 
something which may well teach us the tendency of power to 
move forward with accelerated pace, if it be allowed to take the 
first step. The Bank of the United States, in addition to the 
services rendered to the treasury, gave for its charter, and for 
the use of the public deposits, a bonus or outright sum of one 
million and a half of dollars. This sum was paid by the bank 
into the treasury soon after the commencement of its charter. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 429 

In the Act which passed both Houses for renewing the charter, 
in 1832, it was provided that the bank, for the same considera- 
tion, should pay two hundred thousand dollars a-year, during 
the period for which it was proposed to renew it. A similar 
provision is in the bill which I asked leave to introduce some 
weeks ago. Now, Sir, this shows that the custody of the de- 
posits is a benefit for which a bank may well afford to pay a 
large annual sum. The banks which now hold the deposits pay 
nothing to the public ; they give no bonus, they pay no annuity. 
But this loss of so much money is not the worst part of the case, 
nor that which ought most to alarm us. Although they pay 
nothing to the public, they do pay, nevertheless, such sums, 
and for such uses, as may be agreed upon between themselves 
and the executive government. We are officially informed that 
an officer is appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to in- 
spect or superintend these selected banks ; and this officer is 
compensated by a salary fixed by the executive, agreed to by 
the banks, and paid by them. I ask, Sir, if there can be a more 
irregular or a more illegal transaction than this ? Whose money 
is it out of which this salary is paid? Is it not money justly 
due to the United States, and paid, because it is so due, for the 
advantage of holding the deposits ? If a dollar is received on 
that account, is not its only true destination into the general 
treasury of the government? And who has authority, without 
law, to create an office, to fix a salary, and to pay that salary 
out of this money ? Here is an inspector or supervisor of the 
deposit banks. But what law has provided for such an officer ? 
What commission has he received ? Who concurred in his ap- 
pointment? What oath does he take? How is he to be pun- 
ished or impeached, if he colludes with any of these banks to 
embezzle the public money or defraud the government ? The 
value of the use of this public money to the deposit banks is 
probably two hundred thousand dollars a year ; or, if less than 
that, it is yet, certainly, a very great sum. May the President 
appoint whatever officers he pleases, with whatever duties he 
pleases, and pay them as much as he pleases out of these 
moneys thus paid by the banks, for the sake of having the 
deposits ? 

Mr. President, the executive claim of power is exactly this, 
that the President may keep the money of the public in what- 
ever banks he chooses, on whatever terms he chooses, and to 
apply the sums which these banks are willing to pay for its use 
to whatever purposes he chooses. These sums are not to come 
into the general treasury. They are to be appropriated before 
they get there ; they are never to be brought under the control 
of Congress ; they are to be paid to officers and agents not 



430 WEBSTER. 

known to the law, not nominated to the Senate, and responsible 
to nobody but the executive itself. I ask gentlemen if all this 
be lawful? Are they prepared to defend it? Will they stand 
up and justify it? In my opinion, Sir, it is a clear and a most 
dangerous assumption of power. It is the creation of office 
without law; the appointment to office without consulting the 
Senate ; the establishment of a salary without law ; and the 
payment of that salary out of a fund which is itself derived 
from the use of the public treasures. This, Sir, is my other 
reason for concurring in the vote of the 28th of March ; and on 
these grounds I leave the propriety of that vote, so far as I am 
concerned with it, to be judged of by the country. 

But, Sir, the President denies the power of the Senate to pass 
any such resolution, on any ground whatever. Suppose the 
declaration contained in the resolution to be true ; suppose the 
President had, in fact, assumed powers not granted to him: 
does the Senate possess the right to declare its opinion, affirm- 
ing this fact, or does it not ? I maintain that the Senate does 
possess such a power ; the President denies it. 

Mr. President, we need not look far, nor search deep, for the 
foundation of this right in the Senate. It is clearly visible, and 
close at hand. In the first place, it is the right of self-defence. 
In the second place, it is a right founded on the duty of repre- 
sentative bodies, in a free government, to defend the public 
liberty against encroachment. We must presume that the Sen- 
ate honestly entertained the opinion expressed in the resolution 
of the 28th of March ; and, entertaining that opinion, its right 
to express it is but the necessary consequence of its right to 
defend its own constitutional authority, as one branch of the 
government. This is its clear right, and this, too, is its impera- 
tive duty. 

If one or both the other branches of the government happen 
to do that which appears to us inconsistent with the constitu- 
tional rights of the Senate, will any one say that the Senate is 
yet bound to be passive, and to be silent ? to do nothing, and to 
say nothing? Or, if one branch appears to encroach on the 
rights of the other two, have these two no power of remon- 
strance, complaint, or resistance ? Sir, the question may be put 
in a still more striking form. Has the Senate a right to have an 
opinion in a case of this kind ? If it may have an opinion, how 
is that opinion to be ascertained but by resolution and vote ? 
The objection must go the whole length ; it must maintain that 
the Senate has not only no right to express opinions, but no 
right to form opinions, on the conduct of the executive govern- 
ment, though in matters intimately affecting the powers and 
duties of the Senate itself. It is not possible, Sir, that such a 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 431 

doctrine can be maintained for a single moment. All political 
bodies resist what they deem encroachments, by resolutions 
expressive of their sentiments, and their purpose to resist such 
encroachments. When such a resolution is presented for its 
consideration, the question is, whether it be true ; not whether 
the body has authority to pass it, admitting it to be true. The 
Senate, like other public bodies, is perfectly justifiable in de- 
fending, in this mode, either its legislative or executive author- 
ity. The usages of Parliament, the practice in our State legis- 
latures and assemblies, both before and since the Revolution, 
and precedents in the Senate itself, fully maintain this right. 
The case of the Panama mission is in point. In that case, Mr. 
Branch, from North Carolina, introduced a resolution, which, 
after reciting that the President, in his annual message, and in 
his communication to the Senate, had asserted that he possessed 
an authority to make certain appointments, although the appoint- 
ments had not been made, went on to declare that " a silent acqui- 
escence on the part of this body, may, at some future time, be drawn 
into dangerous precedent" ; and to resolve, therefore, that the 
President does not possess the right or power said to be claimed 
by him. This resolution was discussed, and finally laid on the 
table. But the question discussed was, whether the resolution 
was correct, in fact and principle ; not whether the Senate had 
any right to pass such resolution. So far as I remember, no one 
pretended that, if the President had exceeded his authority, 
the Senate might not so declare by resolution. No one ventured 
to contend that, whether the rights of the Senate were invaded 
or not, the Senate must hold its peace*. 

The Protest labours strenuously to show that the Senate 
adopted the resolution of the 28th of March, under its judicial 
authority. The reason of this attempt is obvious enough. If 
the Senate, in its judicial character, has been trying the Presi- 
dent, then he has not had a regular and formal trial ; and, on 
that ground, it is hoped the public sympathy may be moved. 
But the Senate has acted not in its judicial, but in its legislative 
capacity. As a legislative body, it has defended its own just 
authority, and the authority of the other branch of the legisla- 
ture. AVhatever attacks our own rights and privileges, or what- 
ever encroaches on the power of both Houses, we may oppose 
and resist, by declaration, resolution, or other similar proceed- 
ings. If we look to the books of precedents, if we examine the 
journals of legislative bodies, we find everywhere instances of 
such proceedings. 

It is to be observed, Sir, that the Protest imposes silence on 
the House of Representatives as well as on the Senate. It de- 
clares that no power is conferred on either branch of the legis- 



432 WEBSTER. 

lature to consider or decide upon official acts of the executive, 
for the purpose of censure, and without a view to legislation or 
impeachment. This, I think, Sir, is pretty high-toned preten- 
sion. According to this doctrine, neither House could assert its 
own rights, however the executive might assail them ; neither 
House could point out the danger to the people, however fast 
executive encroachment might be extending itself, or whatever 
danger it might threaten to the public liberties. If the two 
Houses of Congress may not express an opinion of executive 
conduct by resolution, there is the same reason why they should 
not express it in any other form, or by any other mode of pro- 
ceeding. Indeed, the Protest limits both Houses, expressly, to 
the case of impeachment. If the House of Eepresentatives are 
not about to impeach the President, they have nothing to say 
of his measures or of his conduct ; and unless the Senate are 
engaged in trying an impeachment, their mouths, too, are 
stopped. It is the practice of the executive to send us an annual 
message, in which he rehearses the general proceedings of the 
executive for the past year. This message we refer to our com- 
mittees for consideration. But, according to the doctrine of the 
Protest, they can express no opinion upon any executive pro- 
ceeding upon which it gives information. Suppose the Presi- 
dent had told us, in his last annual message, what he had 
previously told us in his cabinet paper, that the removal of the 
deposits was Ms act, done on Ms responsibility ; and that the 
Secretary of the Treasury had exercised no discretion, formed 
no judgment, presumed to have no opinions whatever, on the 
subject. This part of the "message would have been referred to 
the Committee on Finance ; but what could they say? They 
think it shows a plain violation of the Constitution and the 
laws ; but the President is not impeached ; therefore they can 
express no censure. They think it a direct invasion of legisla- 
tive power, but they must not say so. They may indeed com- 
mend, if they can. The grateful business of praise is lawful to 
them ; but if, instead of commendation and applause, they find 
cause for disapprobation, censure, or alarm, the Protest enjoins 
upon them absolute silence. 

Formerly, Sir, it was a practice for the President to meet both 
Houses, at the opening of the session, and deliver a speech, as 
is still the usage of some of the State legislatures. To this 
speech there was an answer from each House, and those answers 
expressed, freely, the sentiments of the House upon all the 
merits and faults of the administration. The discussion of the 
topics contained in the speech, and the debate on the answers, 
usually drew out the whole force of parties, and lasted some- 
times a week. President Washington's conduct, in every year 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 433 

of his administration, was thus freely and publicly canvassed. 
He did not complain of it ; he did not doubt that both Houses 
had a perfect right to comment, with the utmost latitude, con- 
sistent with decorum, upon all his measures. Answers, or 
amendments to answers, were not unfrequently proposed, very 
hostile to his own course of public policy, if not sometimes bor- 
dering on disrespect. And when they did express respect and 
regard, there were votes ready to be recorded against the ex- 
pression of those sentiments. To all this President Washington 
took no exception ; for he well knew that these, and similar 
proceedings, belonged to the power of popular bodies. But if 
the President were now to meet us with a speech, and should 
inform us of measures, adopted by himself in the recess, which 
should appear to us the most plain, palpable, and dangerous 
violations of the Constitution, we must nevertheless either keep 
respectful silence, or fill our answer merely with courtly phrases 
of approbation. 

Mr. President, I know not who wrote this Protest, 7 but I con- 
fess I am astonished, truly astonished, as well at the want of 
knowledge which it displays of constitutional law, as at the 
high and dangerous pretensions which it puts forth. Neither 
branch of the legislature can express censure upon the Presi- 
dent's conduct ! Suppose that we should see him enlisting 
troops and raising an army, can we say nothing, and do noth- 
ing ? Suppose he were to declare war against a foreign power, 
and put the army and the fleet in action; are we still to be 
silent? Suppose we should see him borrowing money on the 
credit of the United States ; are we yet to wait for impeach- 
ment? Indeed, Sir, in regard to this borrowing money on the 
credit of the United States, I wish to call the attention of the 
Senate not only to what might happen, but to what has actually 
happened. We are informed that the Post-Office Department, 
a department over which the President claims the same control 
as over the rest, has actually borrowed near half a million of money 
on the credit of the United States. 

Mr. President, the first power granted to Congress by the 
Constitution is the power to lay taxes ; the second, the power to 
borrow money on the credit of the United States. Now, Sir, 
where does the executive find its authority, in or through any 
department, to borrow money without authority of Congress? 
This proceeding appears to me wholly illegal, and reprehensible 
in a very high degree. It may be said that it is not true that 

7 It was pretty well understood at the time, that the Protest was written by 
the Hon. Edward Livingston, then Secretary of State; but Webster was, in 
propriety, bound to ignore this. Mr. Livingston was a very able, accomplished, 
and honourable man ; but probably a better lawyer than statesman. 



434 WEBSTER. 

this money is borrowed on the credit of the United States, but 
that it is borrowed on the credit of the Post-Office Department. 
But that would be mere evasion. The department is but a 
name. It is an office, and nothing more. The banks have not 
lent this money to any officer. If Congress should abolish the 
whole department to-morrow, would the banks not expect the 
United States to replace this borrowed money? The money, 
then, is borrowed on the credit of the United States, — an act 
which Congress alone is competent to authorize. If the Post- 
Office Department may borrow money, so may the War Depart- 
ment, and the Navy Department. If half a million may be 
borrowed, ten millions may be borrowed. What, then, if this 
transaction shall be justified, is to hinder the executive from 
borrowing money to maintain fleets and armies, or for any other 
purpose,' at his pleasure, without any authority of law? Yet 
even this, according to the doctrine of the Protest, we have no 
right to complain of. We have no right to declare that an exec- 
utive department has violated the Constitution and broken the 
law, by borrowing money on the credit of the United States. 
Nor could we make a similar declaration, if we were to see the 
executive, by means of this borrowed money, enlisting armies 
and equipping fleets. And yet, Sir, the President has found no 
difficulty, heretofore, in expressing his opinions, in a paper not 
called for by the exercise of any Vjicial duty, upon the conduct and 
proceedings of the two Houses of Congress. At the commence- 
ment of this session, he sent us a message, commenting on the 
land bill which the. two Houses passed at the end of the last 
session. That bill he had not approved, nor had he returned it 
with objections. Congress was dissolved ; and the bill, there- 
fore, was completely dead, and could not be revived. No com- 
munication from him could have the least possible effect as an 
official act. Yet he saw fit to send a message on the subject, 
and in that message he very freely declares his opinion that the 
bill which had passed both Houses began with an entire subver- 
sion of every one cf the compacts by ivhich the United States became 
possessed of their Western domain ; that one of its provisions was 
in direct and undisguised violation of the pledge given by Congress to 
the States ; that the Constitution provides that these compacts 
shall be untouched by the legislative power, which can only 
make needful rules and regulations ; and that all beyond that is 
an assumption of undelegated power. 

These are the terms in which the President speaks of an Act 
of the two Houses ; not in an official paper, not in a communi- 
cation which it was necessary for him to make to them ; but in 
a message, adopted only as a mode through which to make pub- 
lic these opinions. After this, it would seem too late to enjoin 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 435 

on the Houses of Congress a total forbearance from all com- 
ment on the measures of the executive. 

Not only is it the right of both Houses, or of either, to resist, 
by vote, declaration, or resolution, whatever it may deem an 
encroachment of executive power, but it is also undoubtedly 
the right of either House to oppose, in like manner, any encroach- 
ment by the other. The two Houses have each its own appro- 
priate powers and authorities, which it is bound to preserve. 
They have, too, different constituents. The members of the 
Senate are representatives of States ; and it is in the Senate 
alone that the four-and-twenty States, as political bodies, have 
a direct influence in the legislative and executive powers of this 
government. He is a strange advocate of State rights, who 
maintains that this body, thus representing the States, and 
thus being the strictly federal branch of the legislature, may 
not assert and maintain, all and singular, its own powers and 
privileges, against either or both of the other branches. 

If any thing be done or threatened derogatory to the rights of 
the States, as secured by the organization of the Senate, may 
we not lift up our voices against it? Suppose the House of 
Representatives should vote that the Senate ought not to pro- 
pose amendments to revenue bills ; would it be the duty of the 
Senate to take no notice of such proceeding ? Or, if we were 
to see the President issuing commissions to office to persons 
who had never been nominated to the Senate, are we not to 
remonstrate ? 

Sir, there is no end of cases, no end of illustrations. The 
doctrines of the Protest, in this respect, cannot stand the 
slightest scrutiny ; they are blown away by the first breath of 
discussion. 

And yet, Sir, it is easy to perceive why this right of declaring 
its sentiments respecting the conduct of the executive is denied 
to either House, in its legislative capacity. It is merely that 
the Senate might be presented in the odious light of trying the 
President, judicially, without regular accusation or hearing. 
The Protest declares that the President is charged with a crime, 
and, without hearing or trial, found guilty and condemned. This is 
evidently an attempt to appeal to popular feeling, and to repre- 
sent the President as unjustly treated and unfairly tried. Sir, 
it is a false appeal. The President has not been tried at all ; he 
has not been accused ; he has not been charged with crime ; he 
has not been condemned. Accusation, trial, and sentence are 
terms belonging to judicial proceedings. But the Senate has 
been engaged in no such proceeding. The resolution of the 
28th of March was not an exercise of judicial power, either in 
form, in substance, or in intent. Everybody knows that the 



436 WEBSTER. 

Senate can exercise no judicial power until articles of impeach- 
ment are brought before it. It is then to proceed, by accusa- 
tion and answer, hearing, trial, and judgment. But there has 
been no impeachment, no answer, no hearing, no judgment. 
All that the Senate did was to pass a resolution, in legislative 
form, declaring its opinion of certain acts of the executive. 
This resolution imputed no crime ; it charged no corrupt mo- 
tive ; it proposed no punishment. It was directed, not against 
the President personally, but against the act ; and that act it 
declared to be, in its judgment, an assumption of authority not 
warranted by the Constitution. 

It is in vain that the Protest attempts to shift tlie resolution 
to the judicial character of the Senate. The case is too plain 
for such an argument to be plausible. But, in order to lay 
some foundation for it, the Protest, as I have already said, 
contends that neither the Senate nor the House of Representa- 
tives can express its opinions on the conduct of the President, 
except in some form connected with impeachment ; so that, if 
the power of impeachment did not exist, these two Houses, 
though they be representative bodies, though one of them be 
filled by the immediate representatives of the people, though 
they be constituted like other popular and representative 
bodies, could not utter a syllable, although they saw the execu- 
tive either trampling on their own rights and privileges, or 
grasping at absolute authority and dominion over the liberties 
of the country! Sir, I hardly know how to speak of such claims 
of impunity for executive encroachment. I am amazed that 
any American citizen should draw up a paper containing such 
lofty pretensions, — pretensions which would have been met 
with scorn, in England, at any time since the Revolution of 
1688. A man who should stand up, in either House of the 
British Parliament, to maintain that the House could not, by 
vote or resolution, maintain its own rights and privileges, 
would make even the Tory benches hang their heads for very 
shame. 

There was indeed a time when such proceedings were not 
allowed. Some of the kings of the Stuart race would not tol- 
erate them. A signal instance of royal displeasure with the 
proceedings of Parliament occurred in the latter part of the 
reign of James the First. The House of Commons had spoken, 
on some occasion, " of its own undoubted rights and privileges." 
The King thereupon sent them a letter, declaring that he would 
not allow that they had any undoubted rights; but that what they 
enjoyed they might still hold by his own royal grace and permission. 
Sir Edward Coke and Mr. Granville were not satisfied with this 
title to their privileges ; and, under their lead, the House 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 437 

entered on its journals a resolution asserting its privileges, as 
its own undoubted right, and manifesting a determination to 
maintain them as such. This, says the historian, so enraged 
his Majesty, that he sent for the journal, had it brought into 
the Council, and there, in the presence of his lords and great 
officers of State, tore out the offensive resolution with his own 
royal hand. He then dissolved Parliament, and sent its most 
refractory members to the Tower. I have no fear, certainly, 
Sir, that this English example will be followed, on this occa- 
sion, to its full extent ; nor would I insinuate that any thing 
outrageous has been thought of, or intended, except outrageous 
pretensions ; but such pretensions I must impute to the author 
of this Protest, whoever that author may be. 

When this and the other House shall lose the freedom of 
speech and debate ; when they shall surrender the rights of 
publicly and freely canvassing all important measures of the 
executive ; when they shall not be allowed to maintain their 
own authority and their own privileges by vote, declaration, or 
resolution, — they will then be no longer free representatives 
of a free people, but slaves themselves, and fit instruments to 
make slaves of others. 

The Protest, Mr. President, concedes what it doubtless re- 
gards as a liberal right of discussion to the people themselves. 
But its language, even in acknowledging this right of the people 
to discuss the conduct of their servants, is qualified and pecul- 
iar. The free people of the United States, it declares, have an 
undoubted right to discuss the official conduct of the President, 
in such language and form as they may think proper, " subject 
only to the restraints of truth and justice." But, then, who is 
to be judge of this truth and justice ? Are the people to judge 
for themselves, or are others to judge for them ? The Protest 
is here speaking of political rights, and not moral rights ; and if 
restraints are imposed on political rights, it must follow, of 
course, that others are to decide whenever the case arises 
whether these restraints have been violated. It is strange that 
the writer of the Protest did not perceive that, by using this 
language, he was pushing the President into a direct avowal of 
the doctrines of 1798. 8 The text of the Protest and the text of 
the obnoxious Act of that year are nearly identical. 

But, Sir, if the people have a right to discuss the official con- 
duct of the executive, so have their representatives. We have 
been taught to regard a representative of the people as a senti- 

8 The allusion is to what is known in history as the Sedition Act, which was 
odious to the people for the very reason that it laid restrictions on freedom of 
speech in regard to the doings of the government. 



438 WEBSTER. 

11 el on the watch-tower of liberty. Is he to be blind, though 
visible danger approaches ? Is he to be deaf, though sounds of 
peril fill the air? Is he to be dumb, while a thousand duties 
impel him to raise the cry of alarm ? Is he not, rather, to catch 
the lowest whisper which breathes intention or purpose of 
encroachment on the public liberties, and to give his voice 
breath and utterance at the first appearance of danger? Is not 
his eye to traverse the whole horizon with the keen and eager 
vision of an unhooded hawk, 9 detecting, through all disguises, 
every enemy advancing, in any form, towards the citadel which 
he guards ? Sir, this watchfulness for public liberty ; this duty 
of foreseeing danger and proclaiming it ; this promptitude and 
boldness in resisting attacks on the Constitution from any 
quarter ; this defence of established landmarks ; this fearless 
resistance of whatever would transcend or remove them, — all 
belong to the representative character, are interwoven with its 
very nature. If deprived of them, an active, intelligent, faith- 
ful agent of the people will be converted into an unresisting and 
passive instrument of power. A representative body, which 
gives up these rights and duties, gives itself up. It is a repre- 
sentative body no longer. It has broken the tie between itself 
and its constituents, and henceforth is fit only to be regarded as 
an inert, self-sacrificed mass, from which all appropriate prin- 
ciple of vitality has departed for ever. 

I have thus endeavoured to vindicate the right of the Senate 
to pass the resolution of the 28th of March, notwithstanding 
the denial of that right in the Protest. 

But there are other sentiments and opinions expressed in the 
Protest, of the very highest importance, and which demand 
nothing less than our utmost attention. 

The first object of a free people is the preservation of their 
liberty; and liberty is only to be preserved by maintaining 
constitutional restraints and just divisions of political power. 
Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pre- 
tence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest gov- 
ernments are despotisms ; the next simplest, limited mon- 
archies ; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose 
numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give 
many positive and many qualified rights. In other words, they 
must be subject to rule and regulation. This is the very essence 
of free political institutions. The spirit of liberty is indeed a 
bold and fearless spirit ; but it is also a sharp-sighted spirit ; 
it is a cautious, sagacious, discriminating, far-seeing intelli- 



9 A reference to the old sport of falconry. A cap or hood was often drawn 
over the hawk's head for the purpose of blinding it. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 439 

gence ; it is jealous of encroachment, jealous of power, jealous 
of man. It demands checks ; it seeks for guards ; it insists 
on securities ; it intrenches itself behind strong defences, and 
fortifies itself with all possible care against the assaults of 
ambition and passion. It does not trust the amiable weak- 
nesses of human nature, and therefore it will not permit power 
to overstep its prescribed limits, though benevolence, good 
intent, and patriotic purpose come along with it. Neither does 
it satisfy itself with flashy and temporary resistance to illegal 
authority. Far otherwise. It seeks for duration and perma- 
nence. It looks before and after ; and, building on the experi- 
ence of ages which are past, it labours diligently for the benefit 
of ages to come. This is the nature of constitutional liberty ; 
and this is our liberty, if we will rightly understand and pre- 
serve it. Every free government is necessarily complicated, 
because all such governments establish restraints, as well on 
the power of government itself as on that of individuals. If we 
will abolish the distinction of branches, and have but one 
branch ; if we will abolish jury trials, and leave all to the 
judge ; if we will then ordain that the legislator shall himself 
be that judge ; and if we will place the executive power in the 
same hands, — we may readily simplify government. We may 
easily bring it to the simplest of all possible forms, — a pure 
despotism. But a separation of departments, so far as practi- 
cable, and the preservation of clear lines of division between 
them, is the fundamental idea in the creation of all our consti- 
tutions ; and doubtless the continuance of regulated liberty 
depends on maintaining these boundaries. • 

In the progress, Sir, of the government of the United States, 
we seem exposed to two classes of dangers or disturbances ; 
one external, the other internal. It may happen that collisions 
arise between this government and the governments of the 
States. That case belongs to the first class. A memorable 
instance of this existed last year. It was my conscientious 
opinion, on that occasion, that the authority claimed by an 
individual State was subversive of the just powers of this 
government, and indeed incompatible with its existence. I 
gave a hearty cooperation, therefore, to measures which the 
crisis seemed to require. We have now before us what ap- 
pears, to my judgment, to be an instance of the latter kind. A 
contest has arisen between different branches of the same 
government, interrupting their harmony, and threatening to 
disturb their balance. It is of the highest importance, there- 
fore, to examine the question carefully, and to decide it justly. 

The separation of the powers of government into three depart- 
ments, though all our constitutions profess to be founded on it, 



440 WEBSTER. 

has nevertheless never been perfectly established in any govern- 
ment of the world, and perhaps never can be. The general prin- 
ciple is of inestimable value, and the leading lines of distinction 
sufficiently plain ; yet there are powers of so undecided a char- 
acter, that they do not seem necessarily to range themselves 
under either head. And most of our constitutions, too, having 
laid down the general principle, immediately create exceptions. 
There do not exist, in the general science of government, or 
the received maxims of political law, such precise definitions as 
enable us always to say of a given power whether it be legisla- 
tive, executive, or judicial. And this is one reason, doubtless, 
why the Constitution, in conferring power on all the depart- 
ments, proceeds not by general definition, but by specific enu- 
meration. And, again, it grants a power in general terms, but 
yet, in the same, or some other article or section, imposes a lim- 
itation or qualification on the grant ; and the grant and the lim- 
itation must of course be construed together. Thus the Con- 
stitution says that all legislative power, therein granted, shall be 
vested in Congress, which Congress shall consist of a Senate and 
House of Representatives ; and yet, in another article, it gives 
to the President a qualified negative over all Acts of Congress. 
So the Constitution declares that the judicial power shall be 
vested in one Supreme Court, and such inferior courts as Con- 
gress may establish. It gives, nevertheless, in another provision, 
judicial power to the Senate; and, in like manner, though it 
declares that the executive power shall be vested in the Presi- 
dent, using, in the immediate context, no words of limitation, 
yet it elsewhere subjects the treaty-making power, and the ap- 
pointing power, to the concurrence of the Senate. The irresist- 
ible inference from these considerations is, that the mere 
nomination of a department, as one of the three great and 
commonly-acknowledged departments of government, does not 
confer on that department any power at all. Notwithstanding 
the departments are called the legislative, the executive, and 
the judicial, we must yet look into the provisions of the Consti- 
tution itself, in order to learn, first, what powers the Constitu- 
tion regards as legislative, executive, and judicial ; and, in the 
next place, what portions or quantities of these powers are con- 
ferred on the respective departments ; because no one will 
contend that all legislative power belongs to Congress, all ex- 
ecutive power to the President, or all judicial power to the 
courts of the United States. 

The first three articles of the Constitution, as all know, are 
employed in prescribing the organization, and enumerating the 
powers, of the three departments. The first article treats of 
the legislature, and its first section is, "All legislative power, 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 441 

herein granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United 
States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Kepresent- 
atives." The second article treats of the executive power, and 
its first section declares that "the executive power shall he 
vested in a President of the United States of America." The 
third article treats of the judicial power, and its first section 
declares that "the judicial power of the United States shall be 
vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the 
Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish." 

It is too plain to be doubted, I think, Sir, that these descrip- 
tions of the persons or officers in whom the executive and the 
judicial powers are to be vested no more define the extent of 
the grant of those powers, than the words quoted from the first 
article describe the extent of the legislative grant to Congress. 
All these several titles, heads of articles, or introductory- 
clauses, with the general declarations which they contain, serve 
to designate the departments, and to mark the general distribu- 
tion of powers ; but in all the departments, in the executive and 
judicial as well as in the legislative, it would be unsafe to con- 
tend for any specific power under such clauses. 

If we look into the State Constitutions, we shall find the line 
of distinction between the departments still less perfectly 
drawn, although the general principle of the distinction is laid 
down in most of them, and in some of them in very positive and 
emphatic terms. In some of these States, notwithstanding the 
principle of distribution is adopted and sanctioned, the legisla- 
ture appoints the judges ; and in others it appoints both the 
governor and the judges ; and in others, again, it appoints not 
only the judges, but all other officers. 

The inferences which, I think, follow from these views of the 
subject, are two: First, that the denomination of a department 
does not fix the limits of the powers conferred on it, nor even 
their exact nature ; and, second, (which indeed follows from the 
first,) that, in our American governments, the chief executive 
magistrate does not necessarily, and by force of his general 
character of supreme executive, possess the appointing power. 
He may have it, or he may not, according to the particular pro- 
visions applicable to each case in the respective Constitutions. 

The President appears to have taken a different view of this 
subject. He seems to regard the appointing power as originally 
and inherently in the executive, and as remaining absolute in 
his hands, except so far as the Constitution restrains it. This I 
do not agree to, and shall have occasion hereafter to examine 
the question further. I have intended thus far only to insist 
on the high and indispensable duty of maintaining the division 
of power as the Constitution has marked that division 'out, and to 



442 WEBSTER. 

oppose claims of authority not founded on express grants or 
necessary implication, but sustained merely by argument or 
inference from names or denominations given to departments. 

Mr. President, the resolutions now before us declare that the 
Protest asserts powers as belonging to the President incon- 
sistent with the authority of the two Houses of Congress, and 
inconsistent with the Constitution ; and that the Protest itself 
is a breach of privilege. I believe all this to be true. 

The doctrines of the Protest are inconsistent with the au- 
thority of the two Houses, because, in my judgment, they deny 
the just extent of the law-making power. I take the Protest as 
it was sent to us, without inquiring how far the subsequent 
message has modified or explained it. It is singular indeed, 
that a paper, so long in preparation, so elaborate in composi- 
tion, and which is put forth for so high a purpose as the Pro- 
test avows, should not be able to stand an hour's discussion, 
before it became evident that it was indispensably necessary 
to alter or explain its contents. Explained or unexplained, 
however, the paper contains sentiments which justify us, as I 
think, in adopting these resolutions. 

In the first place, I think the Protest a clear breach of priv- 
ilege. It is a reproof or rebuke of the Senate, in language 
hardly respectful, for the exercise of a power clearly belonging 
to it as a legislative body. It entirely misrepresents the pro- 
ceedings of the Senate. I find this paragraph in it, among 
others of a similar tone and character: "A majority of the 
Senate, whose interference with the preliminary question has, 
for the best of all reasons, been studiously excluded, anticipate 
the action of the House of Representatives, assume not only 
the function which belongs exclusively to that body, but con- 
vert themselves into accusers, witnesses, counsel, and judges, 
and prejudge the whole case ; thus presenting the appalling 
spectacle, in a free State, of judges going through a laboured 
preparation for an impartial hearing and decision, by a pre- 
vious ex parte investigation and sentence against the supposed 
offender." 

Xow, Sir, this paragraph, I am bound to say, is a total mis- 
representation of the proceedings of the Senate. A majority of 
the Senate have not anticipated the House of Representatives ; 
they have not assumed the functions of that body ; they have 
not converted themselves into accusers, witnesses, counsel, or 
judges ; they have made no ex parte investigation ; they have 
given no sentence. This paragraph is an elaborate perversion 
of the whole design and the whole proceedings of the Senate. 
A Protest, sent to us by the President, against votes which the 
Senate has an unquestionable right to pass, and containing, too, 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 443 

such a misrepresentation of these votes as this paragraph mani- 
fests, is a breach of privilege. 

But there is another breach of privilege. The President 
interferes between the members of the Senate and their con- 
stituents, and charges them with acting contrary to the will of 
those constituents. Pie says it is his right and duty to look to 
the journals of the Senate to ascertain who voted for the 
resolution of the 28th of March, and then to show that indi- 
vidual Senators have, by their votes on that resolution, diso- 
beyed the instructions or violated the known will of the legisla- 
tures who appointed them. All this he claims as his right and 
his duty. And where does he find any such right or any such 
duty? What right has he to send a message to either House 
of Congress, telling its members that they disobey the will of 
their constituents? Has any English sovereign since Crom- 
well's time dared to send such a message to Parliament? Sir, 
if he can tell us that some of us disobey our constituents, he 
can tell us that all do so ; and if we consent to receive this lan- 
guage from him, there is but one remaining step ; and that is, 
that, since we thus disobey the will of our constituents, he 
should disperse us and send us home. In my opinion, the first 
step in this process is as distinct a breach of privilege as the 
last. If Cromwell's examples shall be followed out, it will not 
be more clear then than it is now that the privileges of the 
Senate have been violated. There is yet something, Sir, which 
surpasses all this ; and that is, that, after this direct interfer- 
ence, after pointing out those Senators whom he would repre- 
sent as having disobeyed the known will of their constituents, 
he disclaims all design of interfering at all! Sir, who could be 
the writer of a message, which, in the first place, makes the 
President assert such monstrous pretensions, and, in the next 
line, affront the understanding of the Senate by disavowing all 
right to do that very thing which he is doing ? If there be any 
thing, Sir, in this message, more likely than the rest of it to 
move one from his equanimity, it is this disclaimer of all design 
to interfere with the responsibility of members of the Senate 
to their constituents, after such interference had already been 
made, in the same paper, in the most objectionable and offen- 
sive form. If it were not for the purpose of telling these Sen- 
ators that they disobeyed the will of the legislatures of the 
States they represent, for what purpose was it that the Protest 
has pointed out the four Senators, and paraded against them 
the sentiments of their legislatures? There can be no other 
purpose. The Protest says indeed, that "these facts belong to 
the history of these proceedings" ! To the history of what 
proceedings ? To any proceeding to which the President was 



444 WEBSTER. 

party? To any proceeding to which the Senate was party? 
Have they any thing to do with the resolution of the 28th of 
March ? But it adds, that these facts are important to the just 
development of the principles and interests involved in the proceed- 
ings. All this might be said of any other facts. It is mere 
words. To what principles, to what interests, are these facts 
important ? They cannot be important but in one point of view ; 
and that is as proof, or evidence, that the Senators have diso- 
beyed instructions, or acted against the known will of their 
constituents, in disapproving the President's conduct. They 
have not the slightest bearing in any other way. They do not 
make the resolution of the Senate more or less true, nor its 
right to pass it more or less clear. Sir, these proceedings of the 
legislatures were introduced into this Protest for the very pur- 
pose, and no other, of showing that members of the Senate have 
acted contrary to the will of their constituents. Every .man 
sees and knows this to have been the sole design; and any 
other pretence is a mockery to our understandings. And this 
purpose is, in my opinion, an unlawful purpose ; it is an unjus- 
tifiable intervention between us and our constituents ; and is 
therefore a manifest and flagrant breach of privilege. 

In the next place, the assertions of the Protest are inconsist- 
ent with the just authority of Congress, because they claim for 
the President a power, independent of Congress, to possess the 
custody and control of the public treasures. Let this point be 
accurately examined ; and, in order to avoid mistake, I will 
read the precise words of the Protest: 

"The custody of the public property, under such regulations 
as may be prescribed by legislative authority, has always been 
considered an appropriate function of the executive department 
in this and all other governments. In accordance with this 
principle, every species of property belonging to the United 
States (excepting that which is in the use of the several coordi- 
nate departments of the government, as means to aid them in 
performing their appropriate functions) is in charge of officers 
appointed by the President, whether it be lands, or buildings, or 
merchandise, or provisions, or clothing, or arms and munitions 
of war. The superintendents and keepers of the whole are ap- 
pointed by the President, and removable at his will. 

"Public money is but a species of public property. It cannot 
be raised by taxation or customs, nor brought into the treasury 
in any other way except by law ; but, whenever or howsoever 
obtained, its custody always has been, and always must be, un- 
less the Constitution be changed, intrusted to the executive 
department. No officer can be created by Congress, for the 
purpose of taking charge of it, whose appointment would not, 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 445 

by the Constitution, at once devolve on the President, and who 
would not be responsible to him for the faithful performance of • 
his duties." 

And, in another place, it declares that "Congress cannot, 
therefore, take out of the hands of the executive department 
the custody of the public property or money, without an as- 
sumption of executive power, and a subversion of the first prin- 
ciples of the Constitution." These, Sir, are propositions which 
cannot receive too much attention. They affirm that the custody 
of the public money constitutionally and necessarily belongs to 
the executive ; and that, until the Constitution is changed, Con- 
gress cannot take it out of his hands, nor make any provision 
for its custody, except by such superintendents and keepers as 
are appointed by the President, and removable at his will. If 
these assertions be correct, we have indeed a singular Constitu- 
tion for a republican government; for we give the executive 
the control, the custody, and the possession of the public treas- 
ury, by original constitutional provision ; and when Congress 
appropriates, it appropriates only what is already in the Presi- 
dent's hands. 

Sir, I hold these propositions to be sound in neither branch. 
I maintain that the custody of the public money does not neces- 
sarily belong to the executive, under this government ; and I 
hold that Congress may so dispose of it, that it shall be under 
the superintendence of keepers not appointed by the President, 
nor removable at his will. I think it competent for Congress to 
declare, as Congress did declare in the bank charter, that the 
public deposits should be made in the bank. "When in the 
bank, they were not kept by persons appointed by the Presi- 
dent, or removable at his will. He could not change that cus- 
tody ; nor could it be changed at all, but according to provisions 
made in the law itself. There was indeed a provision in the 
law authorizing the Secretary to change the custody. But sup- 
pose there had been no such provision ; suppose the contingent 
power had not been given to the Secretary ; would it not have 
been a lawful enactment? Might not the law have provided 
that the public moneys should remain in the bank, until Con- 
gress itself should otherwise order, leaving no power of removal 
anywhere else ? And if such provision had been made, what 
power, or custody, or control, would the President have pos- 
sessed over them ? Clearly, none at all. The Act of May, 1800, 
directed custom-house bonds, in places where the bank which 
was then in existence was situated, or where it had branches, to 
be deposited in the bank or its branches for collection, without 
the reservation of any power of removal to the Secretary or any* 
body else. Now, Sir, this was an unconstitutional law, if the 



446 WEBSTEE. 

Protest, in the part now under consideration, be correct ; be- 
cause it placed the public money in a custody beyond the con- 
trol of the President, and in hands of keepers not appointed by 
him, nor removable at his pleasure. One may readily discern, 
Sir, the process of reasoning by which the author of the Protest 
brought himself to the conclusion that Congress could not 
place the public moneys beyond the President's control. It 
is all founded on the power of appointment and the power of 
removal. These powers, it is supposed, must give the President 
complete control and authority over those who actually hold 
the money, and therefore must necessarily subject its custody, 
at all times, to his own individual will. This is the argument. 

It is true, that the appointment of all public officers, with 
some exceptions, is, by the Constitution, given to the President, 
with the consent of the Senate ; and as, in most cases, public 
property must be held by some officer, its keepers will generally 
be persons so appointed. But this is only the common, not a 
necessary consequence of giving the appointing power to the 
President and Senate. Congress may still, if it shall so see fit, 
place the public treasure in the hand' of no officer appointed by 
the President, or removable by him, but in hands quite beyond 
his control. Subject to one contingency only, it did this very 
thing by the charter of the present bank ; and it did the same 
thing absolutely, and subject to no contingency, by the law of 
1800. The Protest, in the first place, seizes on the fact that all 
officers must be appointed by the President, or on his nomina- 
tion ; it then assumes the next step, that all officers are, and 
must be, removable at his pleasure ; and then, insisting that 
public money, like other public property, must be kept by some 
jyublic officer, it thus arrives at the conclusion that it must always 
be in the hands of those who are appointed by the President, 
and who are removable at his pleasure. And it is very clear 
that the Protest means to maintain that the tenure of office cannot 
be so regulated by law, as that public officers shall not be removable 
at the pleasure of the President. 

The President considers the right of removal as a fixed, 
vested, constitutional right, which Congress cannot limit, con- 
trol, or qualify, until the Constitution shall be altered. This, 
Sir, is doctrine which I am not prepared to admit. I shall not 
now discuss the question whether the law may not place the 
tenure of office beyond the reach of executive pleasure ; but I 
wish merely to draw the attention of the Senate to the fact that 
any such power in Congress is denied by the principles and by 
the words of the Protest. According to that paper, we live 
under a Constitution by the provisions of which the public 
treasures are, necessarily and unavoidably, always under execu- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PEOTEST. 447 

tive control ; and as the executive may remove all officers, and 
appoint others, at least temporarily, without the concurrence of 
the Senate, he may hold those treasures, in the hands of per- 
sons appointed by himself alone, in defiance of any law which 
Congress has passed or can pass. It is to be seen, Sir, how far 
such claims of power will receive the approbation of the coun- 
try. It is to be seen whether a construction will be readily 
adopted which thus places the public purse out of the guardian- 
ship of the immediate representatives of the people. 

But, Sir, there is, in this paper, something even yet more 
strange than these extraordinary claims of power. There is a 
strong disposition, running through the whole Protest, to repre- 
sent the executive department of this government as the pecul- 
iar protector of the public liberty, the chief security on which 
the people are to rely against the encroachment of other 
branches of the government. Nothing can be more manifest 
than this purpose. To this end, the Protest spreads out the 
President's official oath, reciting all its words in a formal quota- 
tion ; and yet the oath of members of Congress is exactly equiv- 
alent. The President is to swear that he will "preserve, pro- 
tect, and defend the Constitution;" and members of Congress 
are to swear that they will " support the Constitution." There 
are more words in one oath than the other, but the sense is pre- 
cisely the same. Why, then, this reference to his official oath, 
and this ostentatious quotation of it? Would the writer of the 
Protest argue that the oath itself is any grant of power ; or 
that, because the President is to "preserve, protect, and defend 
the Constitution," he is therefore to use what means he pleases, 
or any means, for such preservation, protection, and defence, 
except those which the Constitution and laws have specifically 
given him ? Such an argument would be absurd ; but if the 
oath be not cited for this preposterous purpose, with what de- 
sign is it thus displayed on the face of the Protest, unless it be 
to support the general idea that the maintenance of the Consti- 
tution and the preservation of the public liberties are especially 
confided to the safe discretion, the sure moderation, the pater- 
nal guardianship of executive power ? The oath of the Presi- 
dent contains three words, all of equal import ; that is, that he 
will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. The oath of 
members of Congress is expressed in shorter phrase ; it is, that 
they will support the Constitution. If there be any difference 
in the meaning of the two oaths, I cannot discern it ; and yet 
the Protest solemnly and formally argues thus: "The duty of 
defending, so far as in him lies, the integrity of the Constitution 
would indeed have resulted from the very nature of his office ; 
but, by thus expressing it in the official oath or affirmation, 



448 WEBSTER. 

which, in this respect, differs from that of every other func- 
tionary, the founders of our republic have attested their sense 
of its importance, and have given to it a peculiar solemnity and 
force." 

Sir, I deny the proposition, and I dispute the proof. I deny 
that the duty of defending the integrity of the Constitution is, 
in any peculiar sense, confided to the President ; and I deny 
that the words of his oath furnish any argument to make good 
that proposition. Be pleased, Sir, to remember against whom it 
is that the President holds it his peculiar duty to defend the in- 
tegrity of the Constitution. It is not against external force ; it 
is not against a foreign foe ; no such thing : but it is against the 
representatives of the people and the representatives of the States ! 
It is against these that the founders of our republic have im- 
posed on him the duty of defending the integrity of the Consti- 
tution ; a duty, he says, of the importance of which they have 
attested their sense, and to which they have given peculiar so- 
lemnity and force, by expressing it in his official oath ! 

Let us pause, Sir, and consider this most strange proposition. 
The President is the chief executive magistrate. He is com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy ; nominates all persons 
to office ; claims a right to remove all at will, and to control all 
while yet in office ; dispenses all favours ; and wields the whole 
patronage of the government. And the proposition is, that the 
duty of defending the integrity of the Constitution against the 
representatives of the States, and against the representatives of 
the people, results to him from the very nature of his office ; and 
that the founders of our republic have given to this duty, thus 
confided to him, peculiar solemnity and force ! 

Mr. President, the contest, for ages, has been to rescue Lib- 
erty from the grasp of executive power. Whoever has engaged 
in her sacred cause, from the days of the downfall of those 
great aristocracies which had stood between the king and the 
people to the time of our independence, has struggled for the 
accomplishment of that single object. On the long list of the 
champions of human freedom, there is not one name dimmed 
by the reproach of advocating the extension of executive au- 
thority: on the contrary, the uniform and steady purpose of all 
such champions has been to limit and restrain it. To this end, 
the spirit of liberty, growing more and more enlightened, and 
more and more vigorous from age to age, has been battering, for 
centuries, against the solid butments of the feudal system. 
To this end, all that could be gained from the imprudence, 
snatched from the weakness, or wrung from the necessities of 
crowned heads, has been carefully gathered up, secured, and 
hoarded, as the rich treasures, the very jewels of liberty. To 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 449 

this end, popular and representative right has kept up its war- 
fare against prerogative, with various success ; sometimes 
writing the history of a whole age in blood ; sometimes witness- 
ing the martyrdom of Sidneys and Kussells ; often baffled and 
repulsed, but still gaining, on the whole, and holding what it 
gained with a grasp which nothing but the complete extinction 
of its own being could compel it to relinquish. At length the 
great conquest over executive power, in the leading western 
States of Europe, has been accomplished. The feudal system, 
like other stupendous fabrics of past ages, is known only by the 
rubbish which it has left behind it. Crowned heads have been 
compelled to submit to the restraints of law, and the people, 
with that intelligence and that spirit which make their voice re- 
sistless, have been able to say to prerogative, "Thus far shalt 
thou come, and no further." I need hardly say, Sir, that into 
the full enjoyment of all which Europe has reached only 
through such slow and painful steps we sprang at once, by the 
Declaration of Independence, and by the establishment of free 
representative governments ; governments borrowing more or 
less from the models of other free States, but strengthened, se- 
cured, improved in their symmetry, and deepened in their 
foundation, by those great men of our own country whose 
names will be as familiar to future times as if they were written 
on the arch of the sky. 

Through all this history of the contest for liberty, executive 
power has been regarded as a lion which must be caged. So 
far from being the object of enlightened popular trust, so far 
from being considered the natural protector of popular right, it 
has been dreaded, uniformly, always dreaded, as the great 
source of its danger. 

And now, Sir, who is he, so ignorant of the history of liberty, 
at home and abroad ; who is he, yet dwelling, in his contempla- 
tions, among the principles and dogmas of the Middle Ages ; 
who is he, from whose bosom all original infusion of American 
spirit has become so entirely evaporated and exhaled, as that he 
shall put into the mouth of the President of the United States 
the doctrine that the defence of liberty naturally results to exec- 
utive power, and is its peculiar duty ? "Who is he that, gener- 
ous and confiding towards power where it is most dangerous, 
and jealous only of those who can restrain it ; who is he that, 
reversing the order of the State, and upheaving the base, would 
poise the pyramid of the political system upon its apex? Who 
is he that, overlooking with contempt the guardianship of the 
representatives of the people, and with equal contempt the 
higher guardianship of the people themselves ;— who is he that 
declares to us, through the President's lips, that the security 



450 WEBSTER. 

for freedom rests in executive authority ? Who is he that be- 
lies the blood and libels the fame of his own ancestors, by 
declaring that they, with solemnity of form and force of manner, 
have invoked the executive power to come to the protection of 
liberty? Who is he that thus charges them with the insanity, 
or the recklessness, of putting the lamb beneath the lion's 
paw? No, Sir. .No, Sir. Our security is in our watchfulness 
of executive power. It was the constitution of this department 
which was infinitely the most difficult part in the great work 
of creating our present government. To give to the executive 
department such power as should make it useful, and yet not 
such as should render it dangerous ; to make it efficient, inde- 
pendent, and strong, and yet to prevent it from sweeping away 
every thing by its union of military and civil authority, by the 
influence of patronage, and office, and f avour ; — this, indeed, 
was difficult. They who had the work to do saw the difficulty, 
and we see it ; and if we would maintain our system, we shall 
act wisely to that end, by preserving every restraint and every 
guard which the Constitution has provided. And when we, 
and those who come after us, have done all that we can do, and 
all that they can do, it will be well for us and for them, if some 
popular executive, by the power of patronage and party, and 
the power, too, of that very popularity, shall not hereafter 
prove an overmatch for all other branches of the government. 

I do not wish, Sir, to impair the power of the President, as it 
stands written down in the Constitution, and as great and good 
men have hitherto exercised it. In this, as in other respects, I 
am for the Constitution as it is. But I will not acquiesce in the 
reversal of all just ideas of government ; I will not degrade the 
character of popular representation ; I will not blindly confide, 
where all experience admonishes me to be jealous ; I will not 
trust executive power, vested in the hands of a single magis- 
trate, to be the guardian of liberty. 

Having claimed for the executive the especial guardianship 
of the Constitution, the Protest proceeds to present a summary 
view of the powers which are supposed to be conferred on the 
executive by that instrument. And it is to this part of the 
message, Sir, that I would, more than to all others, call the 
particular attention of the Senate. I confess that it was only 
upon careful reperusal of the paper that I perceived the extent 
to which its assertions of power reach. I do not speak now of 
the President's claims of power as opposed to legislative au- 
thority, but of his opinions as to his own authority, duty, and 
responsibility, as connected with all other officers under the 
government. He is of opinion that the whole executive power is 
vested in him, and that he is responsible for its entire exercise ; 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 451 

that, among the duties imposed on him, is that of "taking care 
that the laws be faithfully executed ; " and that, "being thus 
made responsible for the entire action of the executive depart- 
ment, it was but reasonable that the power of appointing, over- 
seeing, and controlling those who execute the laws — a power 
in its nature executive — should remain in his hands. It is, 
therefore, not only his right, but the Constitution makes it his 
duty, to ' nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate, appoint,' all 'officers of the United States whose 
appointments are not in the Constitution otherwise provided 
for,' with a proviso that the appointment of inferior officers 
may be vested in the President alone, in the courts of justice, 
or in the heads of departments." 

The first proposition, then, which the Protest asserts, in 
regard to the President's powers as executive magistrate, is, 
that, the general duty being imposed on him by the Constitu- 
tion, of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, he 
thereby becomes himself responsible for the conduct of every person 
employed in the government; "for the entire action," as the paper 
expresses it, "of the executive department." This, Sir, is very 
dangerous logic. I reject the inference altogether. No such 
responsibility, nor any thing like it, follows from the general 
provision of the Constitution, making it his duty to see the laws 
executed. If it did, we should have, in fact, but one officer in 
the whole government. The President would be everybody. 
And the Protest assumes to the President this whole responsi- 
bility for every other officer, for the very purpose of making 
the President everybody, of annihilating every thing like inde- 
pendence, responsibility, or character in all other public agents. 
The whole responsibility is assumed, in order that it may be 
more plausibly argued that all officers of government are, not 
agents of the law, but the President's agents, and therefore 
responsible to him alone. If he be responsible for the conduct 
of all officers, and they be responsible to him only, then it may 
be maintained that such officers are but his own agents, his 
substitutes, his deputies. The first thing to be done, there- 
fore, is to assume the responsibility for all ; and this, you will 
perceive, Sir, is done, in the fullest manner, in the passages 
which I have read. Having thus assumed for the President 
the entire responsibility of the whole government, the Protest 
advances boldly to its conclusion, and claims, at once, absolute 
power over all individuals in office, as being merely the Presi- 
dent's agents. This is the language : "The whole executive 
power being vested in the President, who is responsible for its 
exercise, it is a necessary consequence that he should have a 
right to employ agents of his own choice, to aid him in the per- 



452 WEBSTER. 

formance of his duties, and to discharge them when he is no 
longer willing to be responsible for their acts." 

This, Sir, completes the work. This handsomely rounds off 
the whole executive system of executive authority. First, the 
President has the whole responsibility ; and then, being thus 
responsible for all, he has, and ought to have, the whole power. 
We have heard of political units, and our American executive, 
as here represented, is indeed a unit. We have a charmingly 
simple government ! Instead of many officers, in different 
departments, each having appropriate duties, and each respon- 
sible for his own duties, we are so fortunate as to have to deal 
with but one officer. The President carries on the government ; 
all the rest are but sub-contractors. Sir, whatever name we 
give him, we have but one executive officer. A Briareus 
sits in the centre of our system, and with his hundred hands 
touches every thing, moves every thing, controls every thing. 
I ask, Sir, Is this republicanism? Is this a government of 
laws ? Is this legal responsibility ? 

According to the Protest, the very duties which every officer 
under the government performs are the duties of the President 
himself. It says that the President has a right to employ 
agents of his own choice, to aid him in the performance of His 
duties. 

Mr. President, if these doctrines be true, it is idle for us any 
longer to talk about any such thing as a government of laws. 
We have no government of laws, not even the semblance or 
shadow of it : we have no legal responsibility. We have an 
executive, consisting of one person, wielding all official power, 
and who is, to every effectual purpose, completely irresponsible. 
The President declares that he is "responsible for the entire 
action of the executive department." ^Responsible! What 
does he mean by being "responsible"? .Does he mean legal 
responsibility? Certainly not. No such thing. Legal respon- 
sibility signifies liability to punishment for misconduct or mal- 
administration. But the Protest does not mean that the Presi- 
dent is liable to be impeached and punished, if a Secretary of 
State should commit treason, if a collector of the customs 
should be guilty of bribery, or if a treasurer should embezzle 
the public money. It does not mean, and cannot mean, that 
he should be answerable for any such crime or such delin- 
quency. What, then, is its notion of that responsibility which 
it says the President is under for all officers, and which au- 
thorizes him to consider all officers as his own personal agents ? 
Sir, it is merely responsibility to public opinion. It is a liability 
to be blamed ; it is the chance of becoming unpopular, the dan- 
ger of losing a reelection. Nothing else is meant in the world. 




THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 453 

It is the hazard of failing in any attempt or enterprise of am- 
bition. This is all the responsibility to which the doctrines 
of the Protest hold the President subject. 

It is precisely the responsibility under which Cromwell acted 
when he dispersed Parliament, telling its members, not in so 
many words indeed, that they disobeyed the will of their con- 
stituents, but telling them that the people were sick of them, 
and that he drove them out "for the glory of God, and the 
good of the nation." It is precisely the responsibility upon 
which Bonaparte broke up the popular assembly of France. I 
do not mean, Sir, certainly, by these illustrations, to insinuate 
designs of violent usurpation against the President ; far from 
it : but I do mean to maintain that such responsibility as 
that with which the Protest clothes him is no legal responsi- 
bility, no constitutional responsibility, no republican responsi- 
bility ; but a mere liability to loss of office, loss of character, 
and loss of fame, if he shall choose to violate the laws and 
overturn the liberties of the country. It is such a responsi- 
bility as leaves every thing in his discretion and his pleasure. 

Sir, it exceeds human belief that any man should put senti- 
ments such as this paper contains into a public communication 
from the President to the Senate. They are sentiments which 
give us all one master. The Protest asserts an absolute right 
to remove all persons from office at pleasure ; and for what 
reason? Because they are incompetent? Because they are 
incapable ? Because they are remiss, negligent, or inattentive ? 
No, Sir; these are not the reasons. But he may discharge 
them, one and all, simply because "he is no longer willing to 
be responsible for their acts!" It insists on an absolute right 
in the President to direct and control every act of every officer 
of the government, except the judges. It asserts this right of 
direct control over and over again. The President may go into 
the treasury, among the auditors and comptrollers, and direct 
them how to settle every man's account : what abatements to 
make from one, what additions to another. He may go into 
the custom-house, among collectors and appraisers, and may 
control estimates, reductions, and appraisements. It is true 
that these officers are sworn to discharge the duties of their 
respective offices honestly and fairly, according to their own 
best abilities ; it is true that many of them are liable to indict- 
ment for official misconduct, and others responsible, in suits of 
individuals, for damages and penalties, if such official miscon- 
duct be proved ; but, notwithstanding all this, the Protest 
avers that all these officers are but the President's agents; that 
they are but aiding him in the discharge of his duties ; that he 
is responsible for their conduct, and that they are removable at 



454 WEBSTER. 

his will and pleasure. And it is under this view of his own au- 
thority that the President calls the Secretaries his Secretaries, 
not once only, but repeatedly. After half a century's adminis- 
tration of this government, Sir;— after we have endeavoured, 
by statute upon statute, and by provision following provision, 
to define and limit official authority ; to assign particular duties 
to particular public servants ; to define those duties ; to create 
penalties for their violation ; to adjust accurately the responsi- 
bility of each agent with his own powers and his own duties 1 ; to 
establish the prevalence of equal rule ; to make the law, as far 
as possible, every thing, and individual will, as far as possible, 
nothing ;— after all this, the astounding assertion rings in our 
ears, that, throughout the whole range of official agency, in its 
smallest ramifications as well as in its larger masses, there 

is but ONE RESPONSIBILITY, ONE DISCRETION, ONE WILL ! 

True indeed it is, Sir, if these sentiments be maintained, true 
indeed it is, that a President of the United States may well 
repeat, from Napoleon, what he repeated from Louis the Four- 
teenth, "lam the State! " 

The argument, by which the writer of the Protest endeavours 
to establish the President's claim to this vast mass of accumu- 
lated authority, is founded on the provision of the Constitution, 
that the executive power shall be vested in the President. No 
doubt the executive power is vested in the President ; but what 
and how much executive power, and how limited? To this 
question I should answer, "Look to the Constitution, and see ; 
examine the particulars of the grant, and learn what that exec- 
utive power is which is given to the President, either by express 
words or by necessary implication." But so the writer of this 
Protest does not reason. He takes these words of the Consti- 
tution as being, of themselves, a general original grant of all 
executive power to the President, subject only to such express 
limitations as the Constitution prescribes. This is clearly the 
writer's view of the subject, unless indeed he goes behind the 
Constitution altogether, as some expressions would intimate, to 
search elsewhere for sources of executive power. Thus the 
Protest says that it is not only the right of the President, but 
that the Constitution makes it his duty, to appoint persons to 
office ; as if the right existed before the Constitution had 
created the duty. It speaks, too, of the power of removal, not 
as a power granted by the Constitution, but expressly as "an 
original executive power, unchecked by the Constitution." I 
should be glad to know how the President gets possession of 
any power by a title earlier, or more original, than the grant of 
the Constitution ; or what is meant by an original power, which 
the President possesses, and which the Constitution has left un- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 455 

checked in his hands. The truth is, Sir, most assuredly, that 
the writer of the Protest, in these passages, was reasoning upon 
the British Constitution, and not upon the Constitution of the 
United States. Indeed, he professes to found himself on au- 
thority drawn from the Constitution of England. I will read, 
Sir, the whole passage. It is this: 

"In strict accordance with this principle, the power of removal, 
which, like that of appointment, is an original executive power, 
is left unchecked by the Constitution in relation to all executive 
officers, for whose conduct the President is responsible ; while 
it is taken from him in relation to judicial officers, for whose 
acts he is not responsible. In the government from which many of 
the fundamental principles of our system are derived, the head of the 
executive department originally had power to appoint and remove at 
will all officers, executive and judicial. It was to take the judges 
out of this general power of removal, and thus make them inde- 
pendent of the executive, that the tenure of their offices was 
changed to good behaviour. Nor is it conceivable why they are 
placed, in our Constitution, upon a tenure different from that 
of all other officers appointed by the executive, unless it be for 
the same purpose." 

Mr. President, I do most solemnly protest (if I too may be 
permitted to make a protest) against this mode of reasoning. 
The analogy between the British Constitution and ours, in this 
respect, is not close enough to guide us safely ; it can only mis- 
lead us. It has entirely misled the writer of the Protest. The 
President is made to argue, upon this subject, as if he had some 
right anterior to the Constitution, which right is, by that instru- 
ment, checked, in some respects, and in other respects is left 
unchecked, but which, nevertheless, still derives its being from 
another source ; just as the British King had, in the early ages 
of the monarchy, an uncontrolled right of appointing and re- 
moving all officers at pleasure ; but which right, so far as it 
respects the judges, has since been checked and controlled by 
Act of Parliament ; the right being original and inherent, the 
check only imposed by law. Sir, I distrust altogether British 
precedents, authorities, and analogies, on such questions as this. 
We are not inquiring how far our Constitution has imposed 
checks on a preexisting authority. We are inquiring what extent 
of power that Constitution has granted. The grant of power, 
the whole source of power, as well as the restrictions and lim- 
itations which are imposed on it, is made in and by the Consti- 
tution. It has no other origin. And it is this, Sir, which 
distinguishes our system so very widely and materially from 
the systems of Europe. Our governments are limited govern- 
ments ; limited in their origin, in their very creation ; limited, 



456 WEBSTER. 

because none but specific powers were ever granted either to 
any department of government, or to the whole : theirs are lim- 
ited, whenever limited at all, by reason of restraints imposed at 
different times on governments originally unlimited and des- 
potic. Our American questions, therefore, must be discussed, 
reasoned on, decided, and settled, on the appropriate principles 
of our own constitutions, and not by inapplicable precedents 
and loose analogies drawn from foreign States. 

Mr. President, in one of the Trench comedies, as you know, 
in which the dulness and prolixity of legal argument is in- 
tended to be severely satirized, while the advocate is tediously 
groping among ancient lore having nothing to do with his case, 
the judge grows impatient, and at last cries out to him to come 
down to the flood I I really wish, Sir, that the writer of this Pro- 
test, since he was discussing matters of the highest importance 
to us as Americans, and which arise out of our own peculiar Con- 
stitution, had kept himself, not only on this side the general 
deluge, but also on this side the Atlantic. I desire that all the 
broad waves of that wide sea should continue to roll between 
us and the influence of those foreign principles and foreign pre- 
cedents which he so eagerly adopts. 

In asserting power for an American President, I prefer he 
should attempt to maintain his assertions on xVmerican reasons. 
I know not, Sir, who the writer was, (I wish I did ; ) but, who- 
ever he was, it is manifest that he argues this part of his case, 
throughout, on the principles of the Constitution of England. 
It is true that, in England, the King is regarded as the original 
fountain of all honour and all office ; and that anciently indeed 
he possessed all political power of every kind. It is true that 
this mass of authority, in the history of that government, has 
been diminished, restrained, and controlled, by charters, by 
immunities, by grants, and by various modifications, which the 
friends of liberty have, at different periods, been able to obtain 
or to impose. All liberty, as we know, all popular privileges, as 
indeed the word itself imports, were formerly considered as 
favours and concessions from the monarch. But whenever and 
wherever civil freedom could get a foothold, and could main- 
tain itself, these favours were turned into rights. Before and 
during the reigns of the princes of the Stuart family, they were 
acknowledged only as favours or privileges graciously allowed; 
although even then, whenever opportunity offered, as in the in- 
stance to which I alluded just now, they were contended for as 
rights ; and by the Revolution of 1683 they were acknowledged 
as the rights of Englishmen, by the prince who then ascended 
the throne, and as the condition on which he was allowed to sit 
upon it. But with us there never was a time when we acknowl- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 457 

edged original, unrestrained, sovereign power over us. Our 
Constitutions are not made to limit and restrain preexisting au- 
thority. They are the instruments by which the people confer 
power on their own servants. If I may use a legal phrase, the 
people are grantors, not grantees. They give to the govern- 
ment, and to each branch of it, all the power it possesses, or can 
possess; and what is not given they retain. In England, before 
her Revolution, and in the rest of Europe since, if we would 
know the extent of liberty or popular right, we must go to 
grants, to charters, to allowances, and indulgences. But with 
us, we go to grants and to constitutions to learn the extent of 
the powers of government. No political power is more original 
than the Constitution ; none is possessed which is not there 
granted ; and the grant, and the limitations of the grant, are in 
the same instrument. 

The powers, therefore, belonging to any branch of our gov- 
ernment are to be construed and settled, not by remote anal- 
ogies drawn from other governments, but from the words of the 
grant itself, in their plain sense and necessary import, and 
according to an interpretation consistent with our own history 
and the spirit of our own institutions. I will never agree that a 
President of the United States holds the whole undivided 
power of office in his own hands, upon the theory that he is 
responsible for the entire action of the whole body of those 
engaged in carrying on the government and executing the laws. 
Such a responsibility is purely ideal, delusive, and vain. There 
is, there can be, no substantial responsibility, any further than 
every individual is answerable, not merely in his reputation, 
not merely in the opinion of mankind, but to the law, for the 
faithful discharge of his own appropriate duties. Again and 
again we hear it said that the President is responsible to the 
American people ! that he is responsible to the bar of public 
opinion ! For whatever he does, he assumes accountability to 
the American people ! For whatever he omits, he expects to 
be brought to the high bar of public opinion ! And this is 
thought enough for a limited, restrained, republican govern- 
ment ! an undefined, undefinable, ideal responsibility to the 
public judgment ! Sir, if all this mean any thing, if it be not 
empty sound, it means no less than that the President may do 
any thing and every thing which he may expect to be tolerated 
in doing. He may go just so far as he thinks it safe to go ; and 
Cromwell and Bonaparte went no further. I ask again, Sir, Is 
this legal responsibility ? Is this the true nature of a govern- 
ment with written laws and limited powers? And allow me, 
Sir, to ask, too, if an executive magistrate, while professing to 



458 WEBSTER. 

act under the Constitution, is restrained only by this responsi. 
bility to public opinion, what prevents him, on the same respon- 
sibility, from proposing a change in that Constitution? Why 
may he not say, "I am about to introduce new forms, new 
principles, and with a new spirit ; I am about to try a political 
experiment on a great scale ; and when I get through with it, 
I shall be responsible to the American people, I shall be an- 
swerable to the bar of public opinion" ? 

Connected, Sir, with the idea of this airy and unreal responsi- 
bility to the public, is another sentiment, which of late we hear 
frequently expressed ; and that is, that the President is the direct 
representative of the American people. This is declared, in the 
Protest, in so many words. "The President," says the Protest, 
"is the direct representative of the American people" Now, Sir, 
this is not the language of the Constitution. The Constitution 
nowhere calls him the representative of the American people ; 
still less their direct representative. It could not do so with 
the least propriety. He is not chosen directly by the people, 
but by a body of electors, some of whom are chosen by the 
people, and some of whom are appointed by the State legisla- 
tures. Where, then, is the authority for saying that the Presi- 
dent is the direct representative of the people ? The Constitution 
calls the members of the other House Eepresentatives, and 
declares that they shall be chosen by the people ; and there 
are no other direct or immediate representatives of the people 
in this government. The Constitution denominates the Presi- 
dent simply the President of the United States ; it points out 
the complex mode of electing him, defines his powers and du- 
ties, and imposes limits and restraints on his authority. With 
these powers and duties, and under these restraints, he be- 
comes, when chosen, President of the United States. That is 
his character, and the denomination of his office. How is it, 
then, that, on this official character, thus cautiously created, 
limited, anddefined, he is to engraft another, and a very im- 
posing character, namely, the character of the direct representa- 
tive of the American people f I hold this, Sir, to be mere as- 
sumption, and dangerous assumption. If he is the representa- 
tive of all the American people, he is the only representative 
which they all have. Nobody else presumes to represent all 
the people. And if he may be allowed to consider himself as 

the SOLE REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, 

and is to act under no other responsibility than such as I have 
already described, then I say, Sir, that the government (I will 
not say the people) has already a master. I deny the sentiment, 
therefore, and I protest against the language ; neither the 



THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST. 459 

sentiment nor the language is to be found in the Constitution 
of the country ; and whosoever is not satisfied to describe the 
powers of the President in the language of the Constitution 
may be justly suspected of being as little satisfied with the 
powers themselves. The President is President. His office 
and his name of office are known, and both are fixed and 
described by law. Being commander of the army and navy, 
holding the power of nominating to office and removing from 
office, and being, by these powers, the fountain of all patronage 
and all favour, what does he not become if he be allowed to 
superadd to all this the character of single representative of 
the American people ? Sir, he becomes what America has not 
been accustomed to see, what this Constitution has never cre- 
ated, and what I cannot contemplate but with profound alarm. 
He who may call himself the single representative of a nation, 
may speak in the name of the nation ; may undertake to wield 
the power of the nation ; and who shall gainsay him, in whatso- 
ever he chooses to pronounce as the nation's will? 

I will now, Sir, ask leave to recapitulate the general doctrines 
of this Protest, and to present them together. They are: 

That neither branch of the legislature can take up, or con- 
sider, for the purpose of censure, any official act of the Presi- 
dent, without some view to legislation or impeachment ; 

That not only the passage, but the discussion, of the resolu- 
tion of the Senate of the 28th of March, was unauthorized by 
the Constitution, and repugnant to its provisions ; 

That the custody of the public treasury always must be in- 
trusted to the executive ; that Congress cannot take it out of 
his hands, nor place it anywhere except under such superinten- 
dents and keepers as are appointed by him, responsible to him, 
and removable at his will ; 

That the whole executive power is in the President, and that 
therefore the duty of defending the integrity of the Constitu- 
tion results to him from the very nature of his office ; and that the 
founders of our republic have attested their sense of the im- 
portance of this duty, and, by expressing it in his official oath, 
have given to it peculiar solemnity and force ; 

That, as he is to take care that the laws be faithfully exe- 
cuted, he is thereby made responsible for the entire action of 
the executive department, with power of appointing, oversee- 
ing, and controlling those who execute the laws ; 

That the power of removal from office, like that of appoint- 
ment, is an original executive power, and is left in his hands 
unchecked by the Constitution, except in the case of judges ; 
that, being responsible for the exercise of the whole executive 



460 WEBSTER. 

power, he has a right to employ agents of his own choice to 
assist him in the performance of his duties, and to discharge 
them when he is no longer willing to be responsible for their 
acts ; 

That the Secretaries are his Secretaries, and all persons ap- 
pointed to offices created by law, except the judges, his agents, 
responsible to him, and removable at his pleasure ; 

And, finally, that he is the direct representative of the American 
people. 

These, Sir, are some of the leading propositions contained in 
the Protest ; and if they be true, then the government under 
which we live is an elective monarchy. It is not yet absolute ; 
there are yet some checks and limitations in the Constitution 
and laws ; but, in its essential and prevailing character, it is an 
elective monarchy. 

Mr. President, I have spoken freely of this Protest, and of 
the doctrines which it advances ; but I have spoken deliber- 
ately. On these high questions of constitutional law, respect 
for my own character, as well as a solemn and profound sense 
of duty, restrains me from giving utterance to a single senti- 
ment which does not flow from entire conviction. 1 feel that I 
am not wrong. I feel that an inborn and inbred love of con- 
stitutional liberty, and some study of our political institutions, 
have not on this occasion misled me. But I have desired to say 
nothing that should give pain to the chief magistrate person- 
ally. I have not sought to fix arrows in his breast ; but I believe 
him mistaken, altogether mistaken, in the sentiments which he 
has expressed ; and I must concur with others in placing on the 
records of the Senate my disapprobation of those sentiments. 
On a vote which is to remain so long as any proceeding of the 
Senate shall last, and on a question which can never cease to be 
important while the Constitution of the country endures, I 
have desired to make public my reasons. They will now be 
known, and I submit them to the judgment of the present and 
of after times. Sir, the occasion is full of interest, it cannot 
pass off without leaving strong impressions on the character of 
public men. A collision has taken place which I could have 
most anxiously wished to avoid ; but it was not to be shunned. 
We have not sought this controversy : it has met us, and been 
forced upon us. In my judgment, the law has been disregarded, 
and the Constitution transgressed ; the fortress of liberty has 
been assaulted, and circumstances have placed the Senate in 
the breach ; and, although we may perish in it, I know we 
shall not fly from it. But I am fearless of consequences. We 
shall hold on, Sir, and hold out, till the people themselves come 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHIJSTGTO^". 461 

to its defence. We shall raise the alarm, and maintain the post, 
till they whose right it is shall decide whether the Senate be a 
faction, wantonly resisting lawful power, or whether it be op- 
posing, with firmness and patriotism, violations of liberty and 
inroads upon the Constitution. 1 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 2 

I rise, Gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great 
man in commemoration of whose birth, and in honour of whose 
character and services, we have here assembled. 

I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one 
present, when I say that there is something more than ordina- 
rily solemn and affecting in this occasion. 

We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is inti- 
mately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the 
prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of 
our country. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the 
hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities ; that 
name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and 
guide the country's friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to 
repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a load- 
stone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole 

1 This, I believe, is, on the whole, my favourite of all W'ebster's speeches,— 
his clearest, tightest, and most finished piece of workmanship. It seems to me 
hardly less than a model of calm, balanced, well-rounded discourse. The rea- 
soning, I think, holds water at every point. Clear statement, luminous order, 
and logical coherence are in an eminent degree its characteristics ; and as an 
exposition or argument in constitutional law, I do not see how it can well be 
beaten; while its occasional flights of rhetoric are severe and restrained, and 
just enough to keep the heart awake without unpoising the head. But what is 
perhaps most worthy of note is, that the speaker here seems perfectly at home 
in his subject, and moves with the ease of conscious mastery, as if he felt per- 
fectly at home. Chancellor Kent, of New York, a very high authority in such 
matters, seems to have been fairly overcome with delight on reading it. Writing 
to Webster, he speaks of it thus : "You never equalled this effoi-t. It surpasses 
evei-y thing in logic, in simplicity and beauty and energy of diction, in clearness, 
in rebuke, ia sarcasm, in patriotic and glowing feeling, in just and profound 
constitutional views. It is worth millions to our liberties." 

2 I here give entire the noble discourse pronounced by Webster in the city 
of Washington, on the 22d of February, 1832. The occasion was as follows : A 
number of gentlemen, members of Congress and others, united in a public 
dinner for the purpose of commemorating the centennial anniversary of Wash- 
ington's birth. Webster presided at the dinner, and his address was made after 
the removal of the cloth. 



462 WEBSTEK. 

people's love, and the whole world's respect. That name, de- 
scending with all time, spreading over the whole Earth, and 
uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of 
men, will for ever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by 
every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for 
human rights and human liberty. 

We perform this grateful duty, Gentlemen, at the expiration 
of a hundred years from his birth, near the place so cherished 
and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the 
capital which bears his own immortal name. 

All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly 
influenced by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or 
of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, 
and deepens the impression, of events with which they are his- 
torically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to 
awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass 
by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, or Camden, as if they 
were ordinary spots on the Earth's surface. Whoever visits 
them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if 
the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered 
these places distinguished still hovered round, with power to 
move and excite all who in future time may approach them. 

But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with 
which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime 
virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become embodied in 
human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should 
be false to our own nature, if we did not indulge in the sponta- 
neous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true 
lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its 
purest models ; and that love of country may be well suspected 
which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to 
be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too 
elevated or too refined to glow with fervour in the commenda- 
tion or the love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. 
It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to 
care nothing for Homer or Milton ; so passionately attached to 
eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham ; or such a 
devotee to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements of 
beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the master- 
pieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness or con- 
tempt. We may be assured, Gentlemen, that he who really 
loves the thing itself, loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend 
of his country loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it 
no degradation to commend and commemorate them. The vol- 
untary outpouring of the public feeling, made to-day, from the 
North to the South, and from the East to the West, proves this 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHI^GTOK. 463 

sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in the 
villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among 
all ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day bespeak grateful 
hearts and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father 
of his Country. And it will be so, in all time to come, so long 
as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous 
youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model 
of Washington's example, and study to be what they behold ; 
they will contemplate his character till all its virtues spread out 
and display themselves to their delighted vision ; as the earliest 
astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed at 
the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constella- 
tions, overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the 
united blaze of a thousand lights. 

Gentlemen, we are at the point of a century from the birth of 
Washington ; and what a century it has been ! During its 
course, the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of 
geometric velocity, accomplishing, for human intelligence and 
human freedom, more than had been done in fives or tens of 
centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commence- 
ment of a new era, as well as at the head of the New World. 
A century from the birth of Washington has changed the 
world. The country of Washington has been the theatre on 
which a great part of that change has been wrought ; and Wash- 
ington himself a principal agent by which it has been accom- 
plished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders ; 
and of both he is the chief. 

If the poetical prediction, uttered a few years before his 
birth, be true ; if indeed it be designed by Providence that the 
grandest exhibition of human character and human affairs shall 
be made on this theatre of the Western world ; if it be true 
that, 

" The four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day; 
Time's noblest offspring is the last"; 

how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropri- 
ately opened, how could its intense interest be adequately sus- 
tained, but by the introduction of just such a character as our 
Washington ? 

Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of 
liberty was struck out in his own country which has since kin- 
dled into a flame, and shot its beams o¥er the Earth. In the 
flow of a century from his birth, the world has changed in 
science, in arts, in the extent of commerce, in the improvement 
of navigation, and in all that relates to the civilization of man. 



464: WEBSTEE. 



But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of indi- 
vidual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading 
the whole long train of other improvements, which has most 
remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has 
not made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness 
of ingenuity in trifles: it has not merely lashed itself to an 
increased speed round the old circles of thought and action ; 
but it has assumed a new character ; it has raised itself from 
beneath governments to a participation in governments ; it has 
mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of 
individual men ; and, with a freedom and strength before alto- 
gether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole 
power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in 
short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal 
principle ; when society has maintained its rights against mili- 
tary power, and established, on foundations never hereafter to 
be shaken, its competency to govern itself. 

It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington, that, having 
been intrusted, in revolutionary times, with the supreme mili- 
tary command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal re- 
nown for wisdom and valour, he should be placed at the head 
of the first government in which an attempt was to be made, on 
a large scale, to rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a 
written constitution and of a pure representative principle. A 
government was to be established, without a throne, without an 
aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges ; and this gov- 
ernment, instead of being a democracy, existing and acting 
within the walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast 
country, of different climates, interests, and habits, and of vari- 
ous communions of our common Christian faith. The experi- 
ment certainly was entirely new. A popular government of 
this extent, it was evident, could be framed only by carrying 
into full effect the principle of representation, or of delegated 
power ; and the world was to see whether society could, by the 
strength of this principle, maintain its own peace and good 
government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct 
itself to political renown and glory. By the benignity of Provi- 
dence, this experiment, so full of interest to us and to our 
posterity for ever, so full of interest indeed to the world in its 
present generation and in all its generations to come, was suf- 
fered to commence under the guidance of Washington. Des- 
tined for this high career, he was fitted for it by wisdom, by 
virtue, by patriotism, «by discretion, by whatever can inspire 
confidence in man toward man. In entering on the untried 
scenes, early disappointment and the premature extinction of 
all hope of success would have been certain, had it not been 



!i- 



THE CHAEACTEE OF WASHINGTON - . 465 

that there did exist throughout the country, in a most extraor- 
dinary degree, an unwavering trust in him who stood at the 
helm. 

I remarked, Gentlemen, that the whole world was and is 
interested in the result of this experiment. And is it not so? 
Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment the 
career which this government is running is among the most 
attractive objects to the civilized world? Do we deceive our- 
selves, or is it true that at this moment that love of liberty and 
that understanding of its true principles which are flying over 
the whole Earth, as on the wings of all the winds, are really 
and truly of American origin? 

At the period of the birth of Washington, there existed in 
Europe no political liberty, in large communities, except the 
Provinces of Holland, and except that England herself had set 
a great example, so far as it went, by her glorious Eevolution 
of 1688. Everywhere else, despotic power was predominant, 
and the feudal or military principle held the mass of mankind 
in hopeless bondage. One half of Europe was crushed by the 
Bourbon sceptre, and no conception of political liberty, no hope 
even of religious toleration, existed among that nation which 
was America's first ally. The King was the State, the King 
was the country, the King was all. There was one king, with 
power not derived from his people, and too high to be ques- 
tioned ; and the rest were all subjects, with no political right 
but obedience. All above was intangible power, all below 
quiet subjection. A recent occurrence in the French Chambers 
shows us how human sentiments on these subjects have 
changed. A Minister had spoken of the "King's subjects." 
"There are no subjects," exclaimed hundreds of voices at once, 
"in a country where the people make the king !" 

Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free govern- 
ment, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, 
has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an 
emanation from Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return 
void. It must change, it is fast changing, the Earth. Our 
great, our high duty is to show, in our own example, that tliis 
spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power ; that its 
benignity is as great as its strength ; that its efficiency to secure 
individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to 
the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and 
powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us with a 
willing, but something of a fearful, admiration. Its deep and 
awful anxiety is to learn whether free States may be stable, as 
well as free ; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as 
feared ; in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous self- 



466 WEBSTER. 

government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a 
truth, established, illustrated, and brought into practice in the 
country of Washington. 

Gentlemen, for the Earth which we inhabit, and the whole 
circle of the Sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem 
to hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this ex- 
periment. If we fail, who shall venture the repetition ? If our 
example shall prove to be one, not of encouragement, but of 
terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where 
else shall the world look for free models? If this great West- 
ern Sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain 
shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted ? What other orb 
shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the 
world ? 

Gentlemen, there is no danger of our overrating or overstating 
the important part which we are now acting in human affairs. 
It should not flatter our personal self-respect, but it should 
reanimate our patriotic virtues, and inspire us with a deeper 
and more solemn sense both of our privileges and of our duties. 
We cannot wish better for our country, nor for the world, than 
that the same spirit which influenced Washington may in- 
fluence all who succeed him ; and that that same blessing from 
above which attended his efforts may also attend theirs. 

The principles of Washington's administration are not left 
doubtful. They are to be found in the Constitution itself, in 
the great measures recommended and approved by him, in his 
speeches to Congress, and in that most interesting paper, his 
Farewell Address to the people of the United States. The 
success of the government under his administration is the high- 
est proof of the soundness of these principles. And, after an 
experience of thirty-five years, what is there which an enemy 
could condemn ? What is there which either his friends, or the 
friends of the country, could wish to have been otherwise ? I 
speak, of course, of great measures and leading principles. 

In the first place, all his measures were right in their intent. 
He stated the whole basis of his own great character, when he 
told the country, in the homely phrase of the proverb, that hon- 
esty is the best policy. One of the most striking things ever said 
of him is, " that he changed mankind's ideas of political greatness." 
To commanding talents, and to success, the common elements 
of such greatness, he added a disregard of self, a spotlessness 
of motive, a steady submission to every public and private 
duty, which threw far into the shade the whole crowd of vulgar 
great. The object of his regard was the whole country. No 
part of it was enough to fill his enlarged patriotism. His love 
of glory, so far as that may be supposed to have influenced him 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHI^GTO^. 467 

at all, spurned every thing short of general approbation. It 
would have been nothing to him, that his partisans or his 
favourites outnumbered, or outvoted, or outmanaged, or out- 
clamoured, those of other leaders. He had no favourites ; he 
rejected all partisanship ; and, acting honestly for the universal 
good, he deserved, what he has so richly enjoyed, the universal 
love. 

His principle it was to act right, and to trust the people for 
support ; his principle it was not to follow the lead of sinister 
and selfish ends, and to rely on the little arts of party delusion 
to obtain public sanction for such a course. Born for his 
country and for the world, he did not give up to party what 
was meant for mankind. The consequence is, that his fame is 
as durable as his principles, as lasting as truth and virtue them- 
selves. While the hundreds whom party excitement and tem- 
porary circumstances and casual combinations have raised into 
transient notoriety, sink again, like thin bubbles, bursting and 
dissolving into the great ocean, Washington's fame is like the 
rock which bounds that ocean, and at whose feet its billows are 
destined to break harmlessly for ever. 

The maxims upon which Washington conducted our foreign 
relations were few and simple. The first was an entire and 
indisputable impartiality towards foreign States. He adhered 
to this rule of public conduct, against very strong inducements 
to depart from it, and when the popularity of the moment 
seemed to favour such a departure. In the next place, he 
maintained true dignity and unsullied honour in all communica- 
tions with foreign States. It was among the high duties de- 
volved upon him, to introduce our new government into the 
circle of civilized States and powerful nations. Not arrogant 
or assuming, with no unbecoming or supercilious bearing, he 
yet exacted for it from all others entire and punctilious respect. 
He demanded, and he obtained at once, a standing of perfect 
equality for his country in the society of nations ; nor was 
there a prince or potentate of his day, whose personal character 
carried with it, into the intercourse with other States, a greater 
degree of respect and veneration. 

He regarded other nations only as they stood in political 
relations to us. With their internal affairs, their political 
parties and dissensions, he scrupulously abstained from all 
interference ; and, on the other hand, he spiritedly repelled all 
such interference by others with us or our concerns. His 
sternest rebuke — the most indignant measure of his whole 
administration — was aimed against such an attempted interfer- 
ence. He felt it as an attempt to wound the national honour, 
and resented it accordingly. 



4G8 WEBSTER. 

The reiterated admonitions in his Farewell Address show his 
deep fears that foreign influence would insinuate itself into our 
councils through the channels of domestic dissensions, and 
obtain a sympathy with our own temporary parties. Against all 
such dangers, he most earnestly entreats the country to guard 
itself. He appeals to its patriotism, to its self-respect, to its 
own honour, to every consideration connected with its welfare 
and happiness, to resist, at the very beginning, all tendencies 
towards such connection of foreign interests with our own 
affairs. "With a tone of earnestness nowhere else found, even 
in his last affectionate farewell advice to his countrymen, he 
says : "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I con- 
jure you to believe me, fellow-citizens), the jealousy of a free 
people ought to be constantly awake ; since history and experi- 
ence prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful 
foes of republican government." 

Lastly, on the subject of foreign relations, Washington never 
forgot that we had interests peculiar to ourselves. The pri- 
mary political concerns of Europe, he saw, did not affect us. 
"We had nothing to do with her balance of power, her family 
compacts, or her successions to thrones. We were placed in a 
condition favourable to neutrality during European wars, and 
to the enjoyment of all the great advantages of that relation. 
"Why, then," he asks us, " why forego the advantages of so 
peculiar a situation ? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign 
ground ? "Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any 
part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the 
toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humour, or 
caprice ? " 

Indeed, Gentlemen, Washington's Farewell Address is full of 
truths important at all times, and particularly deserving consid- 
eration at the present. With a sagacity which brought the 
future before him, and made it like the present, he saw and 
pointed out the dangers that even at this moment most immi- 
nently threaten us. I hardly know how a greater service of 
that kind could now be done to the community, than by a 
renewed and wide diffusion of that admirable paper, and an 
earnest invitation to every man in the country to reperuse and 
consider it. Its political maxims are invaluable ; its exhortation 
to love of country and to brotherly affection among citizens, 
touching ; and the solemnity with which it urges the observance 
of moral duties, and impresses the power of religious obligation, 
gives to it the highest character of truly disinterested, sincere, 
parental advice. 

The domestic policy of Washington found its pole-star in the 
avowed objects of the Constitution itself. He sought so to ad- 



THE CHARACTER OE WASHIKGTOK. 469 

minister that Constitution as to form a more perfect union, 
establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 
common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
blessings of liberty. These were objects interesting, in the 
highest degree, to the whole country, and his policy embraced 
the whole country. 

Among his earliest and most important duties was the organi- 
zation of the government itself, the choice of his confidential 
advisers, and the various appointments to office. This duty, so 
important and delicate, when a whole government was to be 
organized, and all its offices for the first time filled, was yet not 
difficult to him ; for he had no sinister ends to accomplish, no 
clamorous partisans to gratify, no pledges to redeem, no object 
to be regarded, but simply the public good. It was a plain, 
straightforward matter, — a mere honest choice of good men for 
the public service. 

His own singleness of purpose, his disinterested patriotism, 
were evinced by the selection of his first cabinet, and by the 
manner in which he filled the seats of Justice, and other places 
of high trust. He sought for men fit for offices ; not for 'offices 
which might suit men. Above personal considerations, above 
local considerations, above party considerations, he felt that he 
could only discharge the sacred trust which the country had 
placed in his hands, by a diligent inquiry after real merit, and a 
conscientious preference of virtue and talent. The whole coun- 
try was the field of his selection. He explored that whole field, 
looking only for whatever it contained most worthy and distin- 
guished. He was, indeed, most successful, and he deserved 
success for the purity of his motives, the liberality of his senti- 
ments, and his enlarged and manly policy. 

Washington's administration established the national credit, 
made provision for the public debt, and for that patriotic army 
whose interests and welfare were always so dear to him ; and, 
by laws wisely framed, and of admirable effect, raised the com- 
merce and navigation of the country, almost at once, from de- 
pression and ruin to a state of prosperity. Nor were his eyes 
open to these interests alone. He viewed with equal concern 
its agriculture and manufactures, and, so far as they came within 
the regular exercise of the powers of this government, they 
experienced regard and favour. 

It should not be omitted, even in this slight reference to the 
general measures and general principles of the first President, 
that he saw and felt the full value and importance of the judi- 
cial department of the government. An upright and able ad- 
ministration of the laws he held to be alike indispensable to 
private happiness and public liberty. The Temple of Justice, 



470 WEBSTEE. 

in his judgment, was a sacred place, and he would profane and 
pollute it who should assign any to minister in it, not spotless 
in character, not incorruptible in integrity, not competent by 
talent and learning, not a fit object of unhesitating trust. 

Among other admonitions, Washington has left us, in his last 
communication to his country, an exhortation against the ex- 
cesses of party spirit. A fire not to be quenched, he yet con- 
jures us not to fan and feed the flame. Undoubtedly, Gentle- 
men, it is the greatest danger of our system and of our time. 
Undoubtedly, if that system should be overthrown, it will be 
the work of excessive party spirit, acting on the government, 
which is dangerous enough, or acting in the government, which 
is a thousand times more dangerous ; for government then 
becomes nothing but organized party, and, in the strange vicis- 
situdes of human affairs, it may come at last, perhaps, to exhibit 
the singular paradox of government itself being in opposition 
to its own powers, at war with the very elements of its own 
existence. Such cases are hopeless. As men may be protected 
against murder, but cannot be guarded against suicide, so gov- 
ernment may be shielded from the assaults of external foes, 
but nothing can save it when it chooses to lay violent hands on 
itself. 

Finally, Gentlemen, there was in the breast of Washington 
one sentiment so deeply felt, so constantly uppermost, that no 
proper occasion escaped without its utterance. From the let- 
ter which he signed in behalf of the Convention when the Con- 
stitution was sent out to the people, to the moment when he 
put his hand to that last paper in which he addressed his 
countrymen, the Union — the Union was the great object of his 
thoughts. In that first letter, he tells them that, to him and 
his brethren of the Convention, union appears to be the great- 
est interest of every true American ; and in that last paper, he 
conjures them to regard that unity of government which con- 
stitutes them one people as the very palladium of their pros- 
perity and safety, and the security of liberty itself. He re- 
garded the union of these States less as one of our blessings, 
than as the great treasure-house which contained them all. 
Here, in his judgment, was the great magazine of all our means 
of prosperity ; here, as he thought, and as every American still 
thinks, are deposited all our animating prospects, all our solid 
hopes for future greatness. He has taught us to maintain this 
union, not by seeking to enlarge the powers of the government, 
on the one hand, nor by surrendering them, on the other ; but 
by an administration of them at once firm and moderate, pur- 
suing objects truly national, and carried on in a spirit of justice 
and equity. The extreme solicitude for the preservation of the 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHIKGTO^. 471 

Union, at all times manifested by him, shows not only the 
opinion he entertained of its importance, but his clear percep- 
tion of those causes which were likely to spring up to endanger 
it, and which, if once they should overthrow the present sys- 
tem, would leave little hope of any future beneficial reunion. 
Of all the presumptions indulged by presumptuous man, that 
is one of the rashest which looks for repeated and favourable 
opportunities for the deliberate establishment of a united gov- 
ernment over distinct and widely-extended communities. Such 
a thing has happened once in human affairs, and but once : the 
event stands out as a prominent exception to all ordinary 
history ; and unless we suppose ourselves running into an age 
of miracles, we may not expect its repetition. 

Washington, therefore, could regard, and did regard, nothing 
as of paramount political interest, but the integrity of the 
Union itself. With a united government, well administered, 
he saw we had nothing to fear ; and without it, nothing to hope. 
The sentiment is just, and its momentous truth should solemnly 
impress the whole country. If we might regard our country 
as personated in the spirit of Washington, if we might consider 
him as representing her, in her past renown, her present pros- 
perity, and her future career, and as in that character demand- 
ing of us all to account for our conduct, as political men or as 
private citizens, how should he answer him who has ventured 
to talk of disunion and dismemberment? Or how should he 
answer him who dwells perpetually on local interests, and fans 
every kindling flame of local prejudice ? How should he an- 
swer him who would array State against State, interest against 
interest, and party against party, careless of the continuance of 
that unity of government which constitutes us one peopk? 

The political prosperity which this country has attained, and 
which it now enjoys, it has acquired mainly through the instru- 
mentality of the present government. While this agent con- 
tinues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of pros- 
perity exists also. We have, while this lasts, a political life 
capable of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome 
misfortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of 
human affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public 
interest. But dismemberment strikes at the very being which 
preserves these faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless 
hand on this great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only 
what we possess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring 
new possessions. It would leave the country, not only bereft 
of its prosperity and happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or 
faculties, by which to exert itself hereafter in the pursuit of 
that prosperity and happiness. 



472 WEBSTER. 

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. 
If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, 
another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, 
future industry may replenish it ; if it desolate and lay waste 
our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green 
again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if 
the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars 
should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the 
dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall 
reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall 
rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional lib- 
erty? Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which 
unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual secu- 
rity, and public prosperity? 3sTo, Gentlemen, if these columns 
fall, they will not be raised again. Like the Coliseum and the 
Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy 
immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than 
were ever shed over the monuments of Koman or Grecian art ; 
for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than 
Greece or Eome ever saw, — the edifice of constitutional Amer- 
ican liberty. 

But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that gra- 
cious Being who has hitherto held our country as in the hollow 
of His hand. Let us trust to the virtue and intelligence of the 
people, and to the efficacy of religious obligation. Let us trust 
to the influence of Washington's example. Let us hope that that 
fear of Heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard to 
duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public 
men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in 
her happy career. Full of these gratifying anticipations and 
hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is 
commenced. A hundred years hence, other disciples of Wash- 
ington will celebrate his birth with no less of sincere admiration 
than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now 
meet, to do themselves and him the honour, so surely as they 
shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in the 
horizon ; so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks 
he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing on toward 
the sea, — so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the 
Union floating on the top of the Capitol ; and then, as now, 
may the Sun, in its course, visit no land more free, more happy, 
more lovely, than this our own country ! 

Gentlemen, I propose — " The Memory of George Wash- 
in gto^." 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 473 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 3 

Gentlemen, you have personal recollections and associa- 
tions, connected with the establishment and adoption of the 
Constitution, which are necessarily called up on an occasion like 
this. It is impossible to forget the prominent agency exer- 
cised by eminent citizens of your own, in regard to that great 
measure. Those great men are now recorded among the illus- 
trious dead ; but they have left names never to be forgotten, 
and never to be remembered without respect and veneration. 
Least of all can they be forgotten by you, w T hen assembled here 
for the purpose of signifying your attachment to the Constitu- 
tion, and your sense of its inestimable importance to the happi- 
ness of the people. 

I should do violence to my own feelings, Gentlemen, — I think 
I should offend yours, — if I omitted respectful mention of dis- 
tinguished names yet fresh in your recollections. How can I 
stand here, to speak of the Constitution of the United States, 
of the wisdom of its provisions, of the difficulties attending its 
adoption, of the evils from which it rescued the country, and of 
the prosperity and power to which it has raised it, and yet pay 
no tribute to those who were highly instrumental in accomplish- 
ing the work? While we are here to rejoice that it yet stands 
firm and strong, while we congratulate one another that we live 
under its benign influence, and cherish hopes of its long dura- 
tion, we cannot forget who they were that, in the day of our na- 
tional infancy, in the times of despondency and despair, mainly 
assisted to work out our deliverance. I should feel that I was 
unfaithful to the strong recollections which the occasion presses 
upon us, that I was not true to gratitude, not true to patriotism, 
not true to the living or the dead, not true to your feelings or 
my own, if I should forbear to make mention of Alexander 
Hamilton. 

Coming from the military service of the country yet a youth, 
but with knowledge and maturity, even in civil affairs, far be- 
yond his years, he made this city the place of his adoption ; and 
he gave the whole powers of his mind to the contemplation of 
the weak and distracted condition of the country. Daily in- 
creasing in acquaintance and confidence with the people of New 
York, he saw, what they also saw, the absolute necessity of some 
closer bond of union for the States. This was the great object 
of his desire. He never appears to have lost sight of it, but 
was found in the lead whenever any thing was to be attempted 

3 From a speech made at a public dinner given to Webster in New Tork, on 
the 10th of March, 1831. See page 385, note 7. 



474 WEBSTER. 

for its accomplishment. One experiment after another, as is 
well known, was tried, and all failed. The States were urgently 
called on to confer such further powers on the old Congress as 
would enable it to redeem the public faith, or to adopt, them- 
selves,, some general and common principle of commercial reg- 
ulation. But the States had not agreed, and were not likely 
to agree. In this posture of affairs, so full of public difficulty 
and public distress, commissioners from five or six of the States 
met, on the request of Virginia, at Annapolis, in September, 
1186. The precise object of their appointment was to take into 
consideration the trade of the United States ; to examine the 
relative situations and trade of the several States ; and to con- 
sider how far a uniform system of commercial regulations was 
necessary to their common interest and permanent harmony. 
Mr. Hamilton was one of these commissioners ; and I have un- 
derstood, though I cannot assert the fact, that their Beport was 
drawn by him. His associate from this State was the venerable 
Judge Benson, who has lived long, and still lives, to see the 
happy results of the counsels which originated in this meeting. 
Of its members, he and Mr. Madison are, I believe, now the 
only survivors. These commissioners recommended, what took 
place the next year, a general Convention of all the States, to 
take into serious deliberation the condition of the country, and 
devise such provisions as should render the constitution of the 
federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union. I 
need not remind you, that of this Convention Mr. Hamilton was 
an active and efficient member. The Constitution was framed, 
and submitted to the country. And then another great work 
was to be undertaken. The Constitution would naturally find, 
and did find, enemies and opposers. Objections to it were numer- 
ous, and powerful, and spirited. These were to be answered ; 
and they were effectually answered. The writers of the num- 
bers of The Federalist, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Madison, and Mr; Jay, 
so greatly distinguished themselves in their discussions of the 
Constitution, that those numbers are generally received as im- 
portant commentaries on the text, and accurate expositions, in 
general, of its objects and purposes. Those papers were all 
written and published in this city. Mr. Hamilton was elected 
one of the distinguished delegation from the city, into the State 
Convention at Poughkeepsie, called to ratify the new Constitu- 
tion. Its debates are published. Mr. Hamilton appears to have 
exerted, on this occasion, to the utmost, every j>ower and fac- 
ulty of his mind. 

The whole question was likely to depend on the decision of 
New York. He felt the full importance of the crisis ; and the 
reports of his speeches, imperfect as they probably are, are yet 



FIRST SETTLEMENT OP NEW ENGLAND. 475 

lasting monuments to his genius and patriotism. He saw at last 
his hopes fulfilled ; he saw the Constitution adopted, and the 
government under it established and organized. The discern- 
ing eye of Washington immediately called him to that post 
which was infinitely the most important in the administration 
of the new system. He was made Secretary of the Treasury ; 
and how he fulfilled the duties of such a place, at such a time, 
the whole country perceived with delight, and the whole world 
saw with admiration. He smote the rock of the national re- 
sources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He 
touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprang 
upon its feet. The fabled birth of Minerva from the brain of 
Jove was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the finan- 
cial system of the United States, as it burst forth from the con- 
ceptions of Alexander Hamilton. 



FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.* 

It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to con- 
nect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with 
what is distant in place or time ; and, looking before and after, 
to hold communication at once with our ancestors and our pos- 
terity. Human and mortal though we are, we are nevertheless 
not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the 
future. Neither the point of time nor the spot of earth, in 
which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual 
enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its his- 
tory ; and in the future by hope and anticipation. By ascend- 
ing to an association with our ancestors ; by contemplating 

4 This and the three pieces which follow it fire from a discourse delivered at 
Plymouth, on the 22d of December, 1820, the two hundredth anniversaiy of the 
landing of the Pilgrims. That discourse stands first, in the order of time, of 
Webster's great efforts in what may be called civic oratory, and is generally 
regarded, I believe, as the corner-stone of his fame as an orator. The discourse 
was not printed till about a year after the delivery. A copy of it having been 
mailed to Chancellor Kent, of New York, that eminent man acknowledged the 
receipt of it in a letter of thanks to Webster, from which I transcribe the follow- 
ing: " The reflections, the sentiments, the morals, the patriotism, the eloquence, 
the imagination of this admirable production are exactly what I anticipated; 
elevated, just, and true. I think it is also embellished by a style distinguished 
for purity, taste, and simplicity." Ex-President John Adams, also, had the dis- 
course read to him, and expressed his judgment of it thus: "If there be an 
American who can read it without tears, I am not that American. It enters 
more perfectly into the genuine spirit of New England than any production I 
ever read." 



476 WEBSTER. 

their example and studying their character ; by partaking their 
sentiments and imbibing their spirit ; by accompanying them in 
their toils, by sympathizing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in 
their successes and triumphs, — we seem to belong to their age, 
and to mingle our own existence with theirs. We become their 
contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what 
they endured, and partake the rewards which they enjoyed. 
And in like manner, by running along the line of future time ; 
by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are 
coming after us ; by attempting something which may promote 
their happiness, and leave some not dishonourable memorial of 
ourselves to their regard, when we shall sleep with the fathers, 
— we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd what- 
ever is future, as well as the past, into the narrow compass of 
our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an 
exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our 
thoughts from the orb which, amidst this universe of worlds, 
the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them, with 
something of the feeling which Nature prompts, and teaches to 
be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the 
contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with which His 
goodness has peopled the infinite of space ; so neither is it false 
or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with 
our whole race, through all time ; allied to our ancestors ; 
allied to our posterity ; closely compacted on all sides ; our- 
selves being but links in the great chain of being which begins 
with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive 
generations, binding together the past, the present, and the 
future, and terminating at last, with the consummation of all 
things earthly, at the throne of God. 

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for an- 
cestry, which nourishes only a weak pride ; as there is also a 
care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, 
or hides the workings of a low and grovelling vanity. But 
there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ances- 
tors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. 
Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly 
know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal 
and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with 
excellence which is departed. Poetry is found to have few 
stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm 
the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and 
speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. 
This belongs to poetry, only because it is congenial to our 
nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true 
philosophy and morality : it deals with us as human beings, 



FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND. 477 

naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this 
state of existence is severed, and who may yet exercise we 
know not what sympathy with ourselves ; and when it carries 
us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued result of all 
the good we do, in the prosperity of those who follow us, till 
it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest 
for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only 
the language of our nature, and affects us with the sentiments 
which belong to us as human beings. 

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and our posterity, 
we are assembled on this memorable spot to perform the duties 
which that relation and the present occasion impose upon us. 
We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our 
Pilgrim Fathers ; our sympathy in their sufferings ; our grati- 
tude for their labours ; our admiration of their virtues ; our 
veneration for their piety ; and our attachment to those princi- 
ples of civil and religious liberty which they encountered the 
dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of 
savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. 
And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are 
rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have 
endeavoured to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that 
in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our 
veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and 
religious liberty, in our regard for whatever advances human 
knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not altogether 
unworthy of our origin. 

There is a local feeling connected with this occasion, too 
strong to be resisted ; a sort of genius of the place, which inspires 
and awes us. We feel that we are on the spot where the first 
scene of our history was laid ; where the hearths and altars of 
New England were first placed ; where Christianity and civili- 
zation and letters made their first lodgment, in a vast extent of 
country, covered with a wilderness, and peopled by roving bar- 
barians. We are here at the season of the year at which the 
event took place. The imagination irresistibly and rapidly 
draws around us the principal features and the leading charac- 
ters in the original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the 
ocean, and we see where the little bark, with the interesting 
group upon its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We 
look around us, and behold the hills and promontories where 
the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places of habita- 
tion and of rest. We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen 
to the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock on 
which New England received the feet of the Pilgrims. We 
seem even to behold them, as they struggle with the elements, 



478 WEBSTER. 

and, with toilsome efforts, gain the shore. We listen to the 
chiefs in council ; we see the unexampled exhibition of female 
fortitude and resignation ; we hear the whisperings of youthful 
impatience, and we see, what a painter of our own has also rep- 
resented by his pencil, 5 chilled and shivering childhood, house- 
less, but for a mother's arms, couchless, but for a mother's 
breast, till our own blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of 
Carver and Bradford ; the decisive and soldierlike air and 
manner of Standish ; the devout Brewster ; the enterpris- 
ing Ai/LERTOisr ; the general firmness and thoughtfulness of 
the whole band ; their conscious joy for dangers escaped ; their 
deep solicitude about dangers to come ; their trust in Heaven ; 
their high religious faith, full of confidence and anticipation, — 
all of these seem to belong to this place, and to be present on 
this occasion, to fill us with reverence and admiration. 

The settlement of New England by the colony which landed 
here on the 22d of December, 1620, although not the first Euro- 
pean establishment in what now constitutes the United States, 
was yet so peculiar in its causes and character, and has been 
followed and must still be followed by such consequences, as to 
give it a high claim to lasting commemoration. On these 
causes and consequences, more than on its immediately attend- 
ant circumstances, its importance, as an historical event, de- 
pends. Great actions and striking occurrences, having excited 
a temporary admiration, often pass away and are forgotten, 
because they leave no lasting results, affecting the prosperity 
and happiness of communities. Such is frequently the fortune 
of the most brilliant military achievements. Of the ten thou- 
sand battles which have been fought ; of all the fields fertilized 
with carnage ; of the banners which have been bathed in blood; 
of the warriors who have hoped that they had risen from the 
field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, 
— how few that continue long to interest mankind! The vic- 
tory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day ; the star 
of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen ; 
disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown ; 
victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion ; and the 
world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives 
and so much treasure. 

But if this be frequently, or generally, the fortune of military 
achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, mili- 

5 The allusion is to a large historical painting of the Landing of the Pilgrims 
at Plymouth, executed by Mr. Henry Sargent, of Boston, and presented by him 
to the Pilgrim Society. It represents the principal personages of the company 
at the moment of landing, with the Indian Samoset, who approaches them with 
a friendly welcome. 



FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND. 479 

taryas well as civil, which sometimes check the current of 
events, give a new turn to human affairs, and transmit their 
consequences through ages. We see their importance in their 
results, and call them great, because great things follow. 
There have been battles which have fixed the fate of nations. 
These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent 
interest, not created by a display of glittering armour, the rush 
of adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the 
flight, the pursuit, and the victory ; but by their effect in advan- 
cing or retarding human knowledge, in overthrowing or estab- 
lishing despotism, in extending or destroying human happiness. 
When the traveller pauses on the plain of Marathon, what are 
the emotions which most strongly agitate his breast ? What is 
the glorious recollection which thrills through his frame, and 
suffuses his eyes ? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Gre- 
cian valour were here most signally displayed ; but that Greece 
herself was saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event 
which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeeding 
glories of the republic. It is because, if that day had gone 
otherwise, Greece had perished. It is because he perceives 
that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her 
sculptors and architects, her governments and free institutions 
point backward to Marathon, and that their future existence 
seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the 
Persian or the Grecian banner should wave victorious in the 
beams of that day's setting Sun. And, as his imagination 
kindles at the retrospect, he is transported back to the interest- 
ing moment; he counts the fearful odds of the contending 
hosts; his interest for the result overwhelms him ; he trembles, 
as if it were still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether he may 
consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and 
Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world. 

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander on the ap- 
proach of that decisive day, "if we conquer, we shall make 
Athens the greatest city of Greece." A prophecy how well ful- 
filled ! "If God prosper us," might have been the more appro- 
priate language of our fathers, when they landed upon this Rock, 
"If God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which shall 
last for ages ; we shall plant here a new society, in the princi- 
ples of the fullest liberty and the purest religion ; we shall 
subdue this wilderness which is before us ; we shall fill the 
region of the great continent, which stretches almost from pole 
to pole, with civilization and Christianity ; the temples of the 
true God shall rise where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous 
sacrifice ; fields and gardens, the flowers of Summer, and the 
waving and golden harvest of Autumn, shall spread over a 



480 WEBSTER. 

thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand valleys, never yet, 
since the creation, reclaimed to the use of civilized man. We 
shall whiten this coast with the canvas of a prosperous com- 
merce ; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a hun- 
dred cities. That which we sow in weakness shall be raised in 
strength. From our sincere, but houseless worship, there shall 
spring splendid temples to record God's goodness ; from the 
simplicity of our social union, there shall arise wise and politic 
constitutions of government, full of the liberty which we our- 
selves bring and breathe ; from our zeal for learning, institu- 
tions shall spring which shall scatter the light of knowledge 
throughout the land, and, in time, paying back where they have 
borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great aggregate of 
human knowledge ; and our descendants, through all genera- 
tions, shall look back to this spot and to this hour with una- 
bated affection and regard." 

Of the motives which influenced the first settlers to a vol- 
untary exile, induced them to relinquish their native coun- 
try, and to seek an asylum in this then unexplored wilderness, 
the first and principal, no doubt, were connected with religion. 
They sought to enjoy a higher degree of religious freedom, and 
what they esteemed a purer form of religious worship, than 
was allowed to their choice, or presented to their imitation, in 
the Old World. The love of religious liberty is a stronger sen- 
timent, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil or 
political freedom. That freedom which the conscience de- 
mands, and which men feel bound by their hope of salvation to 
contend for, can hardly fail to be attained. Conscience, in the 
cause of religion and the worship of the Deity, prepares the 
mind to act and to suffer beyond almost all other causes. It 
sometimes gives an impulse so irresistible, that no fetters of 
power or of opinion can withstand it. History instructs us 
that this love of religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the 
breast of man, made up of the clearest sense of right and the 
highest conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest despot- 
ism in the face, and, with means apparently the most inade- 
quate, to shake principalities and powers. There is a boldness, 
a spirit of daring, in religious reformers, not to be measured by 
the general rules which control men's purposes and actions. 
If the hand of power be laid upon it, this only seems to aug- 
ment its force and elasticity, and to cause its action to be more 
formidable and violent. Human invention has devised nothing, 
human power has compassed nothing, that can forcibly restrain 
it, when it breaks forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way 
to it ; nothing can check it, but indulgence. It loses its power 



FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND. 481 

only when it has gained its object. The principle of toleration, 
to which 'the world has come so slowly, is at once the most just 
and the most wise of all principles. Even when religious 
feeling takes a character of extravagance and enthusiasm, and 
seems to threaten the order of society and shake the columns 
of the social edifice, its principal danger is in its restraint. If 
it be allowed indulgence and exhaustion, like the elemental 
fires, it only agitates, and perhaps purifies, the atmosphere ; 
while its efforts to throw on restraint would burst the world 
asunder. 

It is certain that, although many of them were republicans 
in principle, we have no evidence that our New England an- 
cestors would have emigrated, as they did, from their native 
country, would have become wanderers in Europe, and finally 
would have undertaken the establishment of a colony here, 
merely from their dislike of the political systems of Europe. 
They fled not so much from the civil government, as from the 
hierarchy, and the laws which enforced conformity to the 
Church establishment. Mr. Robinson had left England as 
early as 1G08, on account of the persecutions for nonconformity, 
and had retired to Holland. He left England, from no disap- 
pointed ambition in affairs of State, from no regrets at the want 
of preferment in the Church, nor from any motive of distinc- 
tion or of gain. Uniformity in matters of religion was pressed 
with such extreme rigour, that a voluntary exile seemed the 
most eligible mode of escaping from the penalties of noncom- 
pliance. The accession of Elizabeth had, it is true, quenched 
the fires of Smithfield, and put an end to the easy acquisition 
of the crown of martyrdom. Her long reign had established 
the Reformation, but toleration was a virtue beyond her concep- 
tion, and beyond the age. She left no example of it to her 
successor ; and he was not of a character which rendered it 
probable that a sentiment either so wise or so liberal would 
originate with him. At the present period it seems incredible 
that the learned, accomplished, unassuming, and inoffensive 
Robinson should neither be tolerated in his peaceable mode of 
worship in his own country, nor suffered quietly to depart from 
it. Yet such was the fact. He left his country by stealth, that 
he might elsewhere enjoy those rights which ought to belong 
to men in all countries. The departure of the Pilgrims for 
Holland is deeply interesting from its circumstances, and also 
as it marked the character of the times, independently of its 
connection with names now incorporated with the history of 
empire. The embarkation was intended to be made in such a 
manner, that it might escape the notice of the officers of gov- 
ernment. Great pains had been taken to secure boats, which 



482 WEBSTER. 

should come undiscovered to the shore, and receive the fugi- 
tives ; and frequent disappointments had been experienced in 
this respect. 

At length the appointed time came, bringing with it unusual 
severity of cold and rain. An unfrequented and barren heath, 
on the shores of Lincolnshire, was the selected spot where the 
feet of the Pilgrims were to tread, for the last time, the land of 
their fathers. The vessel which was to receive them did not 
come until the next day ; and in the mean time the little band 
was collected, and men and women and children and baggage 
were crowded together, in melancholy and distressed confusion. 
The sea was rough, and the women and children were already 
sick, from their passage down the river to the place of embarka- 
tion on the sea. At length the wished-for boat silently and fear- 
fully approaches the shore, and men and women and children, 
shaking with fear and with cold, as many as the small vessel could 
bear, venture off on a dangerous sea. Immediately the advance 
of horses is heard from behind, armed men appear, and those 
not yet embarked are seized, and taken into custody. In the 
hurry of the moment, the first parties had been sent on board 
without any attempt to keep members of the same family to- 
gether; and, on account of the appearance of the horsemen, 
the boat never returned for the residue. Those who had got 
away, and those who had not, were in equal distress. A storm, 
of great violence and long duration, arose at sea, which not 
only protracted the voyage, rendered distressing by the want of 
all accommodations which the interruption of the embarkation 
had occasioned, but also forced the vessel out of her course, and 
menaced immediate shipwreck; while those on shore, when 
they were dismissed from the custody of the officers of justice, 
having no longer homes or houses to retire to, and their friends 
and protectors being already gone, became objects of necessary 
charity, as well as of deep commiseration. 

As this scene passes before us, we can hardly forbear asking, 
whether this be a band of malefactors and felons flying from 
justice. What are their crimes, that they hide themselves in 
darkness? To what punishment are they exposed, that, to 
avoid it, men and women and children thus encounter the surf 
of the North Sea, and the terrors of a night storm ? What in- 
duces this armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all 
ages and both sexes ? Truth does not allow us to answer these 
inquiries in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the jus- 
tice of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. 
It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying from causeless 
oppression. It was conscience, attempting to escape from the 
arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Kobinson and Brewster, 



THE FIRST CENTURY OF NEW ENGLAND. 483 

leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to 
find a shelter on the shore of the neighbouring continent, but 
ultimately to come hither; and, having surmounted all diffi- 
culties and braved a thousand dangers, to find here a place of 
refuge and of rest. Thanks be to God, that this spot was hon- 
oured as the asylum of religious liberty I May its standard, 
reared here, remain for ever ! May it rise up as high as 
heaven, till its banner shall fan the air of both continents, and 
wave as a glorious ensign of peace and security to the nations ! 



THE FIRST CENTURY OF NEW ENGLAND. 

As was to be expected, the Roman Colonies partook of the 
fortunes, as well as the sentiments and general character, of the 
seat of empire. They lived together with her, they flourished 
with her, and fell with her. The branches were lopped away 
even before the vast and venerable trunk itself fell prostrate to 
the earth. Nothing had proceeded from her which could sup- 
port itself, and bear up the name of its origin, when her own 
sustaining arm should be enfeebled or withdrawn. It was not 
given to Rome to see, either at her zenith or in her decline, a 
child of her own, distant indeed, and independent of her control, 
yet speaking her language and inheriting her blood, springing 
forward to a competition with her own power, and a comparison 
with her own great renown. She saw not a vast region of the 
Earth peopled from her stock, full of States and political com- 
munities, improving upon the models of her institutions, and 
breathing in fuller measure the spirit which she had breathed 
in the best periods of her existence ; enjoying and extending 
her arts and her literature ; rising rapidly from political child- 
hood to manly strength and independence; her offspring, yet 
now her equal ; unconnected with the causes which might 
affect the duration of her own power and greatness ; of com- 
mon origin, but not linked in a common fate ; giving ample 
pledge, that her name should not be forgotten ; that her lan- 
guage should not cease to be used among men; that whatsoever 
she had done for human knowledge and human happiness 
should be treasured up and preserved ; that the record of her 
existence and her achievements should not be obscured, al- 
though, in the inscrutable purposes of Providence, it might be 
her destiny to fall from opulence and splendour ; although the 
time might come, when darkness should settle on all her hills ; 
when foreign or domestic violence should overturn her altars 



484 WEBSTER. 

and her temples ; when ignorance and despotism should fill the 
places where Laws, and Arts, and Liberty had flourished ; 
when the feet of barbarism should trample on the tombs of her 
Consuls, and the walls of her Senate-house and Forum echo 
only to the voice of savage triumph. She saw not this glorious 
vision, to inspire and fortify her against the possible decay or 
downfall of her power. Happy are they who in our day may 
behold it, if they shall contemplate it with the sentiments which 
it ought to inspire ! 

The New England Colonies differ quite as widely from the 
Asiatic establishments of the modern European nations, as 
from the models of the ancient States. The sole object of those 
establishments was, originally, trade ; although we have seen, 
in one of them, the anomaly of a mere trading company attain- 
ing a political character, disbursing revenues, and maintaining 
armies and fortresses, until it has extended its control over sev- 
enty millions of people. Differing from these, and still more 
from the New England and North American Colonies, are the 
European settlements in the West India Islands. It is not 
strange that, when men's minds were turned to the settlement 
of America, different objects should be proposed by those who 
emigrated to the different regions of so vast a country. Climate, 
soil, and condition were not all equally favourable to all pur- 
suits. In the West Indies, the purpose of those who went 
thither was to engage in that species of agriculture, suited to 
the soil and climate, which seems to bear more resemblance to 
commerce than to the hard and plain tillage of New England. 
The great staples of these countries, being partly an agricultu- 
ral and partly a manufactured product, and not being of the 
necessaries of life, become the object of calculation, with re- 
spect to a profitable investment of capital, like any other enter- 
prise of trade or manufacture. The more especially, as, 
requiring, by necessity or habit, slave-labour for their produc- 
tion, the capital necessary to carry on the work of this produc- 
tion is very considerable. The West Indies are resorted to, 
therefore, rather for the investment of capital than for the 
purpose of sustaining life by personal labour. Such as possess a 
considerable amount of capital, or such as choose to adventure 
in commercial speculations without capital, can alone be fitted 
to be emigrants to the islands. The agriculture of these re- 
gions, as before observed, is a sort of .commerce ; and it is a 
species of employment in which labour seems to form an incon- 
siderable ingredient in the productive causes, since the portion 
of white-labour is exceedingly small, and slave-labour is rather 
more like profit on stock or capital than labour properly so 
called. The individual who undertakes an establishment of 






THE FIRST CENTURY OF NEW ENGLAND. 485 

this kind takes into the account the cost of the necessary num- 
ber of slaves, in the same manner as he calculates the cost of 
the land. The uncertainty, too, of this species of employment 
affords another ground of resemblance to commerce. Although 
gainful on the whole, and in a series of years, it is often very 
disastrous for a single. year; and, as the capital is not readily 
invested in other pursuits, bad crops or bad markets not only 
affect the profits, but the capital itself. Hence the sudden 
depressions which take place in the value of such estates. 

But the great and leading observation, relative to these estab- 
lishments, remains to be made. It is, that the owners of the 
soil and of the capital seldom consider themselves at home in the 
colony. A very great portion of the soil itself is usually owned 
in the mother country ; a still greater is mortgaged for capital 
obtained there ; and, in general, those who are to derive an 
interest from the products look to the parent country as the 
place for enjoyment of their wealth. The population is there- 
fore constantly fluctuating. Nobody qomes but to return. A 
constant succession of owners, agents, and factors takes place. 
Whatsoever the soil, forced by the unmitigated toil of slavery, 
can yield, is sent home to defray rents, and interests, and agen- 
cies, or to give the means of living in a better society. In such 
a state, it is evident that no spirit of permanent improvement 
is likely to spring up. Profits will not be invested with a dis- 
tant view of benefiting posterity. Koads and canals will hardly 
be built ; schools will not be founded ; colleges will not be en- 
dowed. There will be few fixtures in society ; no principles 
of utility or elegance, planted now, with the hope of being 
developed and expanded hereafter. Profit, immediate profit 
must be the principal active spring in the social system. There 
may be many particular exceptions to these general remarks, 
but the outline of the whole is such as is here drawn. 

Another most important consequence of such a state of 
things is, that no idea of independence of the parent country is 
likely to arise ; unless, indeed, it should spring up in a form 
that would threaten universal desolation. The inhabitants 
have no strong attachment to the place which they inhabit. 
The hope of a great portion of them is to leave it ; and their 
great desire, to leave it soon. However useful they may be to 
the parent State, how much soever they may add to the con- 
veniences and luxuries of life, these colonies are not favoured 
spots for the expansion of the human mind, for the progress of 
permanent improvement, or for sowing the seeds of future 
independent empire. 

Different indeed, most widely different, from all these in- 
stances of emigration and plantation, were the condition, the 



486 WEBSTER. 

purposes, and the prospects of our fathers, when they estab- 
lished their infant colony upon this spot. They came hither to 
a land from which they were never to return. Hither they had 
brought, and here they were to fix, their hopes, their attach- 
ments, and their objects in life. Some natural tears they shed, 
as they left the pleasant abodes of their fathers, and some emo- 
tions they suppressed, when the white cliffs of their native 
country, now seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight. 
They were acting, however, upon a resolution not to be daunted. 
With whatever stifled regrets, with whatever occasional hesita- 
tion, with whatever appalling apprehensions, which might some- 
times arise with force to shake the firmest purpose, they had 
yet committed themselves to Heaven and the elements ; and a 
thousand leagues of water soon interposed to separate them for 
ever from the region which gave them birth. A new existence 
awaited them here ; and when they saw these shores, rough, 
cold, barbarous, and barren, as then they were, they beheld 
their country. That mixed and strong feeling which we call 
love of country, and which is, in general, never extinguished in 
the heart of man, grasped and embraced its proper object here. 
Whatever constitutes country, except the earth and the sun, all 
the moral causes of affection and attachment which operate 
upon the heart, they had brought with them to their new abode. 
Here were now their families and friends, their homes and 
their property. Before they reached the shore, they had estab- 
lished the elements of a social system, and at a much earlier 
period had settled their forms of religious worship. At the 
moment of their landing, therefore, they possessed institutions 
of government and institutions of religion : and friends and 
families, and social and religious institutions, established by 
consent, founded on choice and preference, how nearly do these 
fill up our whole idea of country ! The morning that beamed 
on the first night of their repose saw the Pilgrims already at 
home in their country. There were political institutions, and 
civil liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied noth- 
ing, in the wanderings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. 
Here was man, indeed, unprotected and unprovided for, on the 
shore of a rude and fearful wilderness ; but it was politic, intel- 
ligent, and educated man. Every thing was civilized but the 
physical world. Institutions, containing in substance all that 
ages had done for human government, were established in a 
forest. Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated Nature ; 
and, more than all, a government and a country were to com- 
mence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine 
light of the Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy 
futurity ! Who would wish that his country's existence had 



THE FIRST CENTURY OF NEW ENGLAND. 487 

otherwise begun ? Who would desire the power of going back 
to the ages of fable ? Who would wish for an origin obscured 
in the darkness of antiquity ? Who would wish for other em- 
blazoning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her 
genealogy, than to be able to say, that her first existence was 
with intelligence, her first breath the inspiration of liberty, 
her first principle the truth of Divine religion ? 

Local attachments and sympathies would ere long spring up 
in the breasts of our ancestors, endearing to them the place of 
their refuge. Whatever natural objects are associated with 
interesting scenes and high efforts, obtain a hold on human 
feeling, and demand from the heart a sort of recognition and 
regard. This Eock soon became hallowed in the esteem of the 
Pilgrims, and these hills grateful to their sight. Neither they 
nor their children were again to till the soil of England, nor 
again to traverse the seas which surrounded her. But here 
was a new sea, now open to their enterprise, and a new soil, 
which had not failed to respond gratefully to their laborious 
industry, and which was already assuming a robe of verdure. 
Hardly had they provided shelter for the living, ere they were 
summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead. The ground had 
become sacred, by enclosing the remains of some of their com- 
panions and connections. A parent, a child, a husband, or 
a wife, had gone the way of all flesh, and mingled with the 
dust of New England. We naturally look with strong emotions 
to the spot, though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those 
we have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what it 
loved most, there it is desirous of laying itself down. No sculpt- 
ured marble, no enduring monument, no honourable inscription, 
no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of the 
tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow 
to our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the con- 
sciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of 
our affections. 

In a short time other causes sprang up to bind the Pilgrims 
with new cords to their chosen land. Children were born, and 
the hopes of future generations arose, in the spot of their new 
habitation. The second generation found this the land of their 
nativity, and saw that they were bound to its fortunes. They 
beheld their fathers' graves around them, and, while they read 
the memorials of their toils and labours, they rejoiced in the 
inheritance which they found bequeathed to them. 

Under the influence of these causes, it was to be expected 
that an interest and a feeling should arise here, entirely differ- 
ent from the interest and feeling of mere Englishmen ; and all 
the subsequent history of the Colonies proves this to have 



488 WEBSTER. 

actually and gradually taken place. With a general acknowl- 
edgment of the supremacy of the British Crown, there was, 
from the first, a repugnance to an entire submission to the con- 
trol of British legislation. The Colonies stood upon their 
charters, which, as they contended, exempted them from the 
ordinary power of the British Parliament, and authorized them 
to conduct their own concerns by their own counsels. They 
utterly resisted the notion that they were to be ruled by the 
mere authority of the government at home, and would not 
endure even that their own charter governments should be 
established on the other side of the Atlantic. It was not a con- 
trolling or protecting board in England, but a government of 
their own, and existing immediately within their limits, which 
could satisfy their wishes. It was easy to foresee, what we 
know also to have happened, that the first great cause of colli- 
sion and jealousy would be, under the notion of political econ- 
omy then and still prevalent in Europe, an attempt on the 
part of the mother country to monopolize the trade of the 
Colonies. Whoever has looked deeply into the causes which 
produced our Revolution, has found, if I mistake not, the origi- 
nal principle far back in this claim, on the part of England, to 
monopolize our trade, and a continued effort on the part of the 
Colonies to resist or evade that monopoly ; if indeed it be not 
still more just and philosophical to go further back, and to con- 
sider it decided that an independent government must arise 
here, the moment it was ascertained that an English colony, 
such as landed in this place, could sustain itself against the 
dangers which surrounded it, and, with other similar establish- 
ments, overspread the land with an English population. Acci- 
dental causes retarded at times, and at times accelerated, the 
progress of the controversy. The Colonies wanted strength, 
and time gave it to them. They required measures of strong 
and palpable injustice, on the part of the mother country, to 
justify resistance ; the early part of the late King's reign fur- 
nished them. They needed spirits of a high order, of great 
daring, of long foresight,' and of commanding power, to seize 
the favouring occasion to strike a blow, which should sever, for 
ever, the tie of colonial dependence ; and these spirits were 
found, in all the extent which that or any crisis could demand, 
in Otis, Adams, Hancock, and the other immediate authors of 
our independence. 



THE SECOND CENTUEY OE NEW ENGLAND. 489 



THE SECOND CENTUEY OF HEW ENGLAND, 

The second century opened upon New England under cir- 
cumstances which evinced that much had already been accom- 
plished, and that still better prospects and brighter hopes were 
before her. She had laid, deep and strong, the foundations of 
her society. Her religious principles were firm, and her moral 
habits exemplary. Her public schools had begun to diffuse 
widely the elements of knowledge ; and the College, under the 
excellent and acceptable administration of Leverett, had been 
raised to a high degree of credit and usefulness. 

The commercial character of the country, notwithstanding all 
discouragements, had begun to display itself, and jive hundred 
vessels, then belonging to Massachusetts, placed her in rela- 
tion to commerce, thus early, at the head of the Colonies. 
An author who wrote very near the close of the first century 
says : "New England is almost deserving that noble name, so 
mightily hath it increased ; and, from a small settlement at 
first, is now become a very populous and flourishing government. 
The capital city, Boston, is a place of great wealth and trade; 
and by much the largest of any in the English empire of Amer- 
ica ; and exceeded by but few cities, perhaps two or three, in 
all the American world." 

But if our ancestors at the close of the first century could 
look back with joy, and even admiration, at the progress of the 
country, what emotions must we not feel, when, from the point 
in which we stand, we also look back and run along the events 
of the century which has now closed? The country which 
then, as we have seen, was thought deserving of a "noble 
name"; which then had "mightily increased," and become 
"very populous"; what was it, in comparison with what our 
eyes behold it? At that period a very great proportion of 
its inhabitants lived in the eastern section of Massachusetts 
proper, and in Plymouth Colony. In Connecticut, there were 
towns along the coast, some of them respectable, but in the 
interior all was a wilderness beyond Hartford. On Connecticut 
river settlements had proceeded as far up as Deerfield, and Fort 
Dummer had been built near where is now the south line of 
New Hampshire. In New Hampshire no settlement was then 
begun thirty miles from the mouth of Piscataqua river, and, in 
what is now Maine, the inhabitants were confined to the coast. 
The aggregate of the whole population of New England did not 
exceed one hundred and sixty thousand. Its present amount is 
probably one million seven hundred thousand. Instead of being 
confined to its former limits, her population has rolled back- 



490 WEBSTER. 

ward and filled up the spaces included within her actual local 
boundaries. Not this only, but it has overflowed those boun- 
daries, and the waves of emigration have pressed further and 
further toward the West. The Alleghany has not checked it ; 
the banks of the Ohio have been covered with it. New Eng- 
land farms, houses, villages, and churches spread over and 
adorn the immense extent from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and 
stretch along from the Alleghany onwards, beyond the Miamis, 
and toward the Palls of St. Anthony. Two thousand miles 
westward from the rock where their fathers landed, may now 
be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields, 
rearing towns and villages, and cherishing,jve trust, the patri- 
monial blessings of wise institutions of liberty and religion. 
The world has seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to 
be empires, and which, half a century ago, were known only as 
remote and unexplored wildernesses, are now teeming with 
population, and prosperous in all the great concerns of life ; in 
good governments, the means of subsistence, and social happi- 
ness. It may be safely asserted that there are now more than 
a million of people, descendants of New England ancestry, 
living free and happy, in regions which, hardly sixty years ago, 
were tracts of unpenetrated forest. Nor do rivers, or moun- 
tains, or seas resist the progress of industry and enterprise. 
Ere long, the sons of the Pilgrims will be on the shores of the 
Pacific. 6 The imagination hardly keeps up with the progress 
of population, improvement, and civilization. 

It is now five-and-f orty years since the growth and rising 
glory of America were portrayed in the English Parliament, 
with inimitable beauty, by the most consummate orator of 
modern times. Going back somewhat more than half a cen- 
tury, and describing our progress as foreseen from that point 
by his amiable friend Lord Bathurst, then living, he spoke of 
the wonderful progress which America had made during the 
period of a single human life. 7 There is no American heart, I 
imagine, that does not glow, both with conscious, patriotic 
pride, and admiration for one of the happiest efforts of elo- 
quence, so often as the vision of " that little speck, scarce visi- 
ble in the mass of national interest, a small seminal principle, 
rather than a formed body," and the progress of its astonishing 
development and growth, are recalled to the recollection. 
But a stronger feeling might be produced, if we were able to 

G It is hardly needful to observe how this prediction has been fulfilled in the 
settlement of California, and its incorporation as a State of the Union. 

7 The allusion is to a very celebrated passage in Burke's Speech on Concilia' 
Hon with America, which is given in an earlier part of this volume. See page 
152. 






THE SECOKD CENTURY OF NEW ENGLAND. 491 

take up this prophetic description where he left it, and, placing 
ourselves at the point of time in which he was speaking, to 
set forth with equal felicity the subsequent progress of the 
country. There is yet among the living a most distinguished 
and venerable name, a descendant of the Pilgrims ; one who 
has been attended through life by a great and fortunate gen- 
ius ; a man illustrious by his own great merits, and favoured 
of Heaven in the long continuation of his years. 8 The time 
when the English orator was thus speaking of America pre- 
ceded but by a few days the actual opening of the Eevolu- 
tionary drama at Lexington. He to whom I have alluded, 
then at the age of forty, was among the most zealous and able 
defenders of the violated rights of his country. He seemed 
already to have filled a full measure of public service and at- 
tained an honourable fame. The moment was full of difficulty 
and danger, and big with events of immeasurable importance. 
The country was, on the very brink of a civil war, of which no 
man could foretell the duration or the result. Something more 
than a courageous hope, or characteristic ardour, would have 
been necessary to impress the glorious prospect on his belief, 
if, at that moment, before the sound of the first shock of actual 
war had reached his ears, some attendant spirit had opened to 
him the vision of the future ; — if it had said to him, " The blow 
is struck, and America is severed from England for ever ! " — 
if it had informed him that he himself, the next annual revolu- 
tion of the Sun, should put his own hand to the great instru- 
ment of Independence, and write his name where all nations 
should behold it and all time should not efface it ; that ere long 
he himself should maintain the interest and represent the sov- 
ereignty of his new-born country in the proudest Courts of 
Europe ; that he should one day exercise her supreme magis- 
tracy ; that he should yet live to behold ten millions of fellow- 
citizens paying him the homage of their deepest gratitude and 
kindest affections ; that he should see distinguished talent and 
high public trust resting where his name rested ; that he should 
even see with his own unclouded eyes the close of the second 
century of New England, who had begun life almost with its 
commencement, and lived through nearly half the whole his- 
tory of his country ; and that on the morning of this auspicious 
day he should be found in the political councils of his native 
State, 9 revising, by the light of experience, that system of gov- 
ernment which forty years before he had assisted to frame 

8 Referring to John Adams, the second President of the United States. 

9 At the time when this was spoken, Mr. Adams was a member, as Webster 
himself also was, of a Convention of Massachusetts, which assembled, in the 
Fall of 1820, to revise and amend the Constitution of the State. 



492 WEBSTER. 

and establish ; and, great and happy as he should then behold 
his country, there should be nothing in prospect to cloud the 
scene, nothing to check the ardour of that confident and patri- 
otic hope which should glow in his bosom to the end of his long- 
protracted and happy life. 



APPEAL AGAINST THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

Our ancestors established their system of government on 
morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, 
cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious 
principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported 
by moral habits. Living under the heavenly light of revela- 
tion, they hoped to find all the social dispositions, all the duties 
which men owe to each other and to society, enforced and per- 
formed. Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them 
good citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion 
free and unmolested ; and, at the end of two centuries, there is 
nothing upon which we can pronounce more confidently, noth- 
ing of which we can express a more deep and earnest convic- 
tion, than of the inestimable importance of that religion to 
man, both in regard to this life and that which is to come. 

If the blessings of our political and social condition have not 
been too highly estimated, we cannot well overrate the respon- 
sibility and duty which they impose upon us. We hold these 
institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be trans- 
mitted, as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance, 
through which whatever has been obtained by the spirit and 
efforts of our ancestors is to be communicated to our children. 

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example 
of our own system, to convince the world that order and law, 
religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of per- 
sons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and 
secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely 
and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be 
signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been 
found, in support of those opinions which maintain that govern- 
ment can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion. As 
far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we are 
bound to correct them ; and, if any practices exist, contrary to 
the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our 
laws or our influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert our- 
selves to restrain and abolish them. 

I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that the land is 



APPEAL AGAIKST THE SLAVE-TKADE. 493 

not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic at which 
every feeling of humanity must for ever revolt, — I mean the 
African slave-trade. Neither public sentiment nor the law has 
hitherto been able entirely to put an end to this odious and 
abominable trade. At the moment when God in His mercy has 
blessed the Christian world with a universal peace, there is rea- 
son to fear that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and char- 
acter, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade by 
subjects and citizens of Christian States, in whose hearts there 
dwell no sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom 
neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. 
In the sight of our law, the African slave-trader is a pirate and 
a felon ; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender far beyond the 
ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter part of 
our history than that which records the measures which have 
been adopted by the government at an early day, and at differ- 
ent times since, for the suppression of this traffic ; and I would 
call on all the true sons of New England to cooperate with the 
laws of man and the justice' of Heaven. If there be, within the 
extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this 
traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, 
to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the 
Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the 
hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and 
fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of 
those who by stealth and at midnight labour in this work of 
Hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instru- 
ments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let 
it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be 
set aside from the Christian world ; let it be put out of the cir- 
cle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized 
man henceforth have no communion with it. 

I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who 
minister at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and nec- 
essary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our relig- 
ion, that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and 
add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If 
the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever there maybe a sinner 
bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit 
is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped 
his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those 
seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean, 
which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence to waft the 
burden of an honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures 
with a conscious pride,— that ocean, which hardy industry re- 
gards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field of 



494 WEBSTER. 

grateful toil, — what is it to the victim of this oppression, when 
he is brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it, for the first 
time, loaded with chains and bleeding with stripes ? What is it 
to him but a wide-spread prospect of suffering, anguish, and 
death ? Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the air longer fra- 
grant to him. The Sun is cast down from heaven. An inhu- 
man and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in 
his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and 
every blessing which his Creator intended for him. 

The Christian communities send forth their emissaries of relig- 
ion and letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the 
vast continent of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts 
make some almost imperceptible progress in the communication 
of knowledge, and in the general improvement of the natives 
who are immediately about them. Not thus slow and imper- 
ceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad passions which 
the subjects of Christian States carry to the land. The slave- 
trade having touched the coast, its influence and its evils 
spread, like a pestilence, over the whole continent, making sav- 
age wars more savage and more frequent, and adding new and 
fierce passions to the contests of barbarians. 

I pursue this topic no further, except again to say that all 
Christendom, being now blessed with peace, is bound by every 
thing which belongs to its character, and to the character of the 
present age, to put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful 
traffic." 



BUNKEK-HILL MONUMENT BEGUN. 1 

This uncounted multitude before me and around me proves 
the feeling which the occasion has excited. These thousands 
of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and, from the 

10 This is, to me, the noblest passage of the Plymouth discourse. Mr. George 
Ticknor, who Avas present at the delivery, tells us, " The passage about the slave- 
trade was delivered with a power of indignation such as I never witnessed on 
any other occasion." I must add, from the same hand, a description of Webster's 
appearance at a social gathering immediately after the discourse : "He was 
full of animation and radiant with happiness. But there was something about 
him very grand and imposing at the same time. In a letter, which I wrote the 
same day, I said that ' he seemed as if he were like the mount that might not 
be touched, and that burned with fire.' I have the same recollection of him 
still." The Reminiscences , from which this is taken, were written many years 
after the event. I find them quoted largely in Mr. George T. Curtis's very inter- 
esting and instructive Life of Daniel Webster. 

1 The corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument was laid on the 17th of June, 
1825, just fifty years after the battle of Bunker Hill. An Association had been 



BUNKER-HILL MONUMENT BEGUN. 495 

impulses of a common gratitude, turned reverently to Heaven 
in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, 
the place, and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep 
impression on our hearts. 

If, indeed, there be any thing in local association fit to affect 
the mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions 
which agitate us here. We are among the sepulchres of our 
fathers. We are on ground distinguished by their valour, their 
constancy, and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not 
to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into notice 
an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had 
never been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born, the 
17th of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subse- 
quent history would have poured its light, and the eminence 
where we stand a point of attraction to the eyes of successive 
generations. But we are Americans. We live in what may be 
called the early age of this great continent ; and we know that 
our posterity, through all time, are here to suffer and enjoy the 
allotments of humanity. We see before us a probable train of 
great events ; we know that our own fortunes have been hap- 
pily cast ; and it is natural, therefore, that we should be moved 
by the contemplation of occurrences which have guided our 
destiny before many of us were born, and settled the condition 
in which we should pass that portion of our existence which 
God allows to men on Earth. 

We do not read even of the discovery of this continent with- 
out feeling something of a personal interest in the event ; with- 
out being reminded how much it has affected our own fortunes 
and our own existence. It would be still more unnatural for 
us, therefore, than for others, to contemplate with unaffected 
minds that interesting, I may say that most touching and pa- 
thetic scene, when the great Discoverer of America stood on 
the deck of his shattered bark, the shades of night falling on 
the sea, yet no man sleeping ; tossed on the billows of an un- 
known ocean, yet the stronger billows of alternate hope and de- 
spair tossing his own troubled thoughts ; extending forward his 

formed some years before, for the purpose of rearing the monument, and Web- 
ster was at that time President of the Association. The occasion was one of 
high interest, and drew a vast throng of people together from various parts 
of the country. The discourse pronounced by Webster on that occasion was 
received with unbounded enthusiasm, and is certainly among his noblest strains 
of eloquence. I here give the opening portion of it. I had it in mind to give, 
also, the passage specially addressed to the band o.f Revolutionary Veterans 
who formed the crowning feature of the assemblage; but that well-known pas- 
sage runs in a vein so lofty and so bold, that perhaps nothing less than Webster's 
own grand delivery could bring it fairly off, or carry the feelings smoothly 
through the course of it. 



49 G WEBSTER. 

harassed frame, straining westward his anxious and eager eyes, 
till Heaven at last granted him a moment of rapture and ec- 
stasy, in blessing his vision with the sight of the unknown world. 

Nearer to our times, more closely connected with our fates, 
and therefore still more interesting to our feelings and affec- 
tions, is the settlement of our own country by colonists from 
England. We cherish every memorial of these worthy ances- 
tors ; we celebrate their patience and fortitude ; we admire 
their daring enterprise ; we teach our children to venerate their 
piety ; and we are justly proud of being descended from men 
who have set the world an example of founding civil institu- 
tions on the great and united principles of human freedom and 
human knowledge. To us, their . children, the story of their 
labours and sufferings can never be without its interest. We 
shall not stand unmoved on the shore of Plymouth, while the 
sea continues to wash it ; nor will our brethren in another early 
and ancient Colony forget the place of its first establishment, 
till their river shall cease to flow by it. No vigour of youth, 
no maturity of manhood, will lead the nation to forget the spots 
where its infancy was cradled and defended. 

But the great event in the history of the continent, which we 
are now met here to commemorate, that prodigy of modern 
times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world, is the 
American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity 
and happiness, of high national honour, distinction, and power, 
we are brought together, in this place, by our love of country, 
by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for 
signal services and patriotic devotion. 

The Society whose organ I am was formed for the purpose of 
rearing some honourable and durable monument to the memory 
of the early friends of American Independence. They have 
thought that for this object no time could be more propitious 
than the present prosperous and peaceful period ; that no place 
could claim preference over this memorable spot ; and that no 
day could be more auspicious to the undertaking than the anni- 
versary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation 
of that monument we have now laid. "With solemnities suited 
to the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for His blessing, 
and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the 
work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from 
a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and una- 
dorned grandeur, it may remain as long as Heaven permits the 
works of man to last, a fit emblem both of the events in memory 
of which it is raised and of the gratitude of those who have 
reared it. 

We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is 



BUNKEK-HILL MONUMENT BEGUN". 497 

most safely deposited in the universal remembrance of man- 
kind. We know that, if we could cause this structure to as- 
cend, not only till it reached the skies, but till it pierced them, 
its broad surfaces could still contain but part of that which, in 
an age of knowledge, hath already been spread over the Earth, 
and which history charges itself with making known to all fu- 
ture times. We know that no inscription on entablatures less 
broad than the Earth itself can carry information of the events 
we commemorate where it has not already gone ; and that no 
structure, which shall not outlive the duration of letters and 
knowledge among men, can prolong the memorial. But our 
object is, by this edifice, to show our own deep sense of the 
value and importance of the achievements of our ancestors ; 
and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep 
alive similar sentiments, and to foster a constant regard for the 
principles of the Revolution. Human beings are composed, not 
of reason only, but of imagination also, and sentiment; and 
that is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriated to 
the purpose of giving right direction to sentiments, and opening 
proper springs of feeling in the heart. Let it not be supposed 
that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to 
cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We 
consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and 
we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it for ever. We 
rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit 
which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy 
influences which have been produced, by the same events, op 
the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to 
mark a spot which must for ever be dear to us and our poster- 
ity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his 
eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished 
where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We 
wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and im- 
portance of that event to every class and every age. We wish 
that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from mater- 
nal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be 
solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that 
labour may look up here, 'and be proud, in the midst of its toil. 
We wish that, in those days of disaster which, as they come on 
all nations, must be expected to come on us also, desponding 
patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that 
the foundations of our national power still stand strong. We 
wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed 
spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute 
also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and 
gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of 



498 



WEBSTER. 



Mm who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his 
who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of 
the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise ! let it rise, 
till it meet the Sun in his coming ; let the earliest light of the 
morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit ! 



BUNKEK-HILL MONUMENT FINISHED. 2 



The Bunker-Hill Monument is finished. Here it stands. 
Fortunate in the high natural eminence on which it is placed, 
higher, infinitely higher in its objects and purpose, it rises over 
the land and over the sea ; and, visible, at their homes, to three 
hundred thousand of the people of Massachusetts, it stands a 
memorial of the last, and a monitor to the present and to all 
succeeding generations. I have spoken of the loftiness of its 
purpose. If it had been without any other design than the 
creation of a work of art, the granite of which it is composed 
would have slept in its native bed. It has a purpose, and that 
purpose gives it its character. That purpose enrobes it with 
dignity and moral grandeur. That well-known purpose it is 
which causes us to look up to it with a feeling of awe. It is it- 
self the orator of this occasion. It is not from my lips, it could 
not be from any human lips, that that strain of eloquence is 
this day to flow most competent to move and excite the vast 
multitudes around me. The powerful speaker stands motion- 
less before us. It is a £>lain shaft. It bears no inscriptions, 
fronting to the rising Sun, from which the future antiquary 
shall wipe the dust. JsTor does the rising Sun cause tones of 
music to issue from its summit. But at the rising of the~ Sun, 
and at the setting of the Sun ; in the blaze of noonday, and be- 
neath the milder effluence of lunar light, —it looks, it speaks, it 
acts, to the full comprehension of every American mind, and 
the awakening of glowing enthusiasm in every American heart. 
Its silent, but awful utterance ; its deep pathos, as it brings to 
our contemplation the 17th of June, 1775, and the consequences 

2 The address from which this is taken was delivei*ed on the 17th of June, 
1843, just eighteen years after the laying of the corner-stone. The monument 
was completed in July, 1842, but the celebration of that event was justly put 
off till the next anniversary of the battle. Webster was Secretary of State at 
the time, and President Tyler and the other members of the Cabinet graced the 
occasion with their presence. The throng of people was even greater than in 
1825, not less than a hundred thousand being assembled, and among them 
delegations of the descendants of New England from the remotest parte of the 
country. 



BUNKER-HILL MONUMENT FINISHED. 499 

which have resulted to us, to our country, and to the world, 
from the events of that day, and which we know must continue 
to rain influence on the destinies of mankind to the end of time; 
the elevation with which it raises us high above the ordinary 
feelings of life, — surpass all that the study of the closet, or 
even the inspiration of genius, can produce. To-day it speaks 
to us. Its future auditories will be the successive generations 
of men, as they rise up before it and gather around it. Its 
speech will be of patriotism and courage ; of civil and religious 
liberty ; of free government ; of the moral improvement and 
elevation of mankind ; and of the immortal memory of those 
who, with heroic devotion, have sacrificed their lives for their 
country. 

Banners and badges, processions and flags, announce to us, 
that amidst this uncounted throng are thousands of natives of 
New England now residents in other States. Welcome, ye kin- 
dred names, with kindred blood ! From the broad savannas of 
the South, from the newer regions of the West, from amidst 
the hundreds of thousands of men of Eastern origin who culti- 
vate the rich valley of the Genesee, or live along the chain of 
the Lakes, from the mountains of Pennsylvania, aud from 
the thronged cities of the coast, welcome, welcome ! Wher- 
ever else you may be strangers, here you are all at home. 
You assemble at this shrine of liberty, near the family altars at 
which your earliest devotions were paid to Heaven; near to the 
temples of worship first entered by you, and near to the schools 
and colleges in which your education was received. You bring 
names which are on the rolls of Lexington, Concord, and Bun- 
ker Hill. You come, some of you, once more to be embraced by 
an aged Revolutionary father, or to receive another, perhaps a 
last, blessing, bestowed in love and tears by a mother, yet sur- 
viving to witness and to enjoy your prosperity and happiness. 

But if family associations and the recollections of the past 
bring you hither with greater alacrity, and mingle with your 
greeting much of local attachment and private affection, greet- 
ing also be given, free and hearty greeting, to every American 
citizen who treads this sacred soil with patriotic feeling, and 
respires with pleasure in an atmosphere perfumed witli the 
recollections of 1775 ! This occasion is respectable, nay, it is 
sublime, by the nationality of its sentiment. Among the sev- 
enteen millions of happy people who form the American 
community, there is not one who has not an interest in this 
monument, as there is not one that has not a deep and abiding 
interest in that which it commemorates. 

Woe betide the man who brings to this day's worship feeling 
less than wholly American 1 Woe betide the man who can 



500 



WEBSTER. 



stand here with the fires of local resentments burning, or the 
purpose of fomenting local jealousies and the stripes of local 
interests festering and rankling in his heart. Union, estab- 
lished in justice, in patriotism, and the most plain and obvious 
common interest, — union, founded on the same love of liberty, 
cemented by blood shed in the same common cause, — union has 
been the source of all our glory and greatness thus far, and is 
the ground of all our highest hopes. This column stands on 
union. I know not that it might not keep its position, if the 
American Union, in the mad conflict of human passions, and in 
the strife of parties and factions, should be broken up and de- 
stroyed. I know not that it would totter and fall to the earth, 
and mingle its fragments with the fragments of Liberty and the 
Constitution, when State shall be separated from State, and 
faction and dismemberment obliterate forever all the hopes of 
the founders of our republic, and the great inheritance of their 
children. It might stand. But who, from beneath the weight 
of mortification and shame that would oppress him, could look 
up to behold it ? Whose eyeballs would not be seared by such 
a spectacle ? For my part, should I live to such a time, I shall 
avert my eyes from it for ever. 



ADAMS W THE COKGKESS OF 1776. 3 



The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, 
and formed indeed a part of it. It was bold, manly, and ener- 
getic ; and such the crisis required. — When public bodies are 
to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests 
are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable 
in speech, further than as it is connected with high intellecual 
and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are 
the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, in- 
deed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from 
far. Labour and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in 
vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but 

3 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third Presidents of the 
"United States, both died within a few hours of each other, on the 4th of July, 
182G. This coincidence was so remarkable as to excite universal interest, and 
is said to have affected the public mind more deeply than any event since the 
death of Washington, which occurred on the 14th of December, 1799. The city 
authorities of Boston took measures for' having the event commemorated in a 
suitable manner; and on the 2d of August following, Webster delivered his 
celebrated Discourse on Adams and Jefferson in Faneuil Hall. I here give that 
portion of the Discourse which is generally considered the best. 



ADAMS IN" THE CONGRESS OF 1776. 501 

they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, 
and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the 
pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it ; they cannot reach 
it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain 
from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with 
spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the 
schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech 
shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of 
their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the deci- 
sion of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is 
vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself 
then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher 
qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent ; then self-devotion is 
eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of 
logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, 
speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every 
feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his 
object, — this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater 
and higher than all eloquence ; it is action, noble, sublime, 
godlike action. 

In July, 1776, the controversy had passed the stage of argu- 
ment. An appeal had been made to force, and opposing armies 
were in the field. Congress, then, was to decide whether the 
tie which had so long bound us to the parent State was to be 
severed at once, and severed for ever. All the Colonies had 
signified their resolution to abide by this decision, and the 
people looked for it with the most intense anxiety. And surely 
fellow-citizens, never, never were men called to a more impor- 
tant political deliberation. If we contemplate it from the point 
where they then stood, no question could be more full of inter- 
est : if we look at it now, and judge of its importance by its 
effects, it appears in still greater magnitude. 

Let us, then, bring before us the assembly which was about to 
decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. Let us open 
their doors, and look in upon their deliberations. Let us sur- 
vey the anxious and care-worn countenances, let us hear the 
firm-toned voices, of this band of patriots. 

Hancock presides over the solemn sitting ; and one of those 
not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute independence is on 
the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from the dec- 
laration. 

"Let us pause! This step, once taken, cannot be retraced. 
This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconcilia- 
tion. If success attend the arms of England, we shall then be 
no longer Colonies, with charters and with privileges : these 
will all be forfeited by this act ; and we shall be in the condi- 



502 



WEBSTER. 



tion of other conquered people, at the mercy of the conquerors. 
For ourselves, we may be ready to run the hazard ; but are we 
ready to carry the country to that length ? Is success so prob- 
able as to justify it? Where is the military, where the naval 
power, by which we are to resist the whole strength of the arm 
of England? for she will exert that strength to the utmost. 
Can we rely on the constancy and perseverance of the people V 
or will they not act as the people of other countries have acted, 
and, wearied with a long war, submit, in the end, to a worse 
oppression? While we stand on our old ground, and insist on 
redress of grievances, we know we are right, and are not an- 
swerable for consequences. Nothing then can be imputed to 
us. But if we now change our object, carry our pretentions 
further, and set up for absolute independence, we shall lose the 
sympathy of mankind. We shall no longer be defending what 
we possess, but struggling for something which we never did 
possess, and which we have solemnly and uniformly disclaimed 
all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of the troubles. 
Abandoning thus our old ground of resistance only to arbitrary 
acts of oppression, the nations will believe the whole to have 
•been mere pretence, and they will look on us, not as injured, 
but as ambitious subjects. I shudder before this responsibility. 
It will be on us, if, relinquishing the ground on which we have 
stood so long, and stood so safely, we now proclaim indepen- 
dence, and carry on the war for that object, while these cities 
burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of 
their owners, and these streams ran blood. It will be upon us, 
it will be upon us, if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and 
ill-judged Declaration, a sterner despotism, maintained by mil- 
itary power, shall be established over our posterity, when we 
ourselves, given up by an exhausted, a harassed, a misled peo- 
ple, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned for our pre- 
sumption on the scaffold." 

It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We 
know his opinions, and we know his character. He would com- 
mence with his accustomed directness and earnestness. 

"Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand 
and my heart to this vote. It is true indeed that in the begin- 
ning we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity 
which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven 
us to arms ; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she 
has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our 
grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why 
then should we defer the Declaration ? Is any man so weak as 
now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave 
either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his life 



ADAMS Itf THE COKGRESS OF 1776. 503 

and his own honour? Are not you, Sir, who sit in that chair, is 
not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both al- 
ready the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and 
of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what 
are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, 
but outlaws ? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry 
on, or to give up, the war? Do we mean to submit to the meas- 
ures of Parliament, Boston-Port Bill and all? Do we mean to 
submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to pow- 
der, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? 
I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. 
Do we mean to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered 
into by men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honour 
to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of 
war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we promised 
to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our 
lives ? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather 
see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earth- 
quake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to 
the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this 
place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed com- 
mander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defence of 
American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and 
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or 
waver in the support I give him. 

" The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And 
if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of In- 
dependence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give 
us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, 
which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves sub- 
jects in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that Eng- 
land herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing 
of independence than consent, by repealing her Acts, to ac- 
knowledge that her whole conduct toward us has been a course 
of injustice and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by 
submitting to that course of things which now predestinates 
our independence than by yielding the points in controversy 
to her rebellious subjects. The former she would regard as the 
result of fortune ; the latter she would feel as her own deep 
disgrace. Why then, why then, Sir, do we not as soon as pos- 
sible change this from a civil to a national war? And since we 
must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy 
all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory? 

" If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. 
The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. 
The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, 






504 WEBSTER. 

and will carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. 
I care not how fickle other people have been found. I know 
the people of these Colonies, and I know that resistance to 
British aggression is deep and settled in their hearts, and 
cannot be eradicated. Every Colony, indeed, has expressed its 
willingness to follow, if we but take the lead. Sir, the Declara- 
tion will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of 
a long and bloody war for restoration of privileges, for redress of 
grievances, for chartered immunities, held under a British King, 
set before them the glorious object of entire independence, 
and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read 
this Declaration at the head of the army ; every sword will be 
drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to main- 
tain it, or to perish on the bed of honour. Publish it from the 
pulpit ; religion will approve it, and the love of religious lib- 
erty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. 
Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it there ; let them hear it 
who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon ; let them see it 
who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker 
Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very 
walls will cry out in its support. 

"Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see 
clearly, through this day's business. You and I indeed may 
rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration 
shall be made good. We may die ; die, colonists ; die, slaves ; 
die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so ; 
be it so ! If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall 
require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at 
the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. 
But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope 
of a country, and that a free country. 

" But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that 
this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost 
blood ; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. 
Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of 
the future, as the Sun in heaven. We shall make this a glori- 
ous, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children 
will honour it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with 
festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual return 
they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection 
and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of grat- 
itude, and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. 
My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in 
it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this 
life, I am now ready here to stake upon it ; and I leave off, as I 



EIGHT USE OF LEARNING. 505 

began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declara- 
tion. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it 
shall be my dying sentiment, Independence now, and indepen- 
dence FOR EVER." 4 



EIGHT USE OF LEAENIKG. 

Literature sometimes disgusts, and pretension to it much 
oftener disgusts, by appearing to hang loosely on the character, 
like something foreign or extraneous, not a part, but an ill- 
adjusted appendage ; or by seeming to overload and weigh it 
down by its unsightly bulk, like the productions of bad taste in 
architecture, where there is massy and cumbrous ornament, 
without strength or solidity of column. This has exposed 
learning, and especially classical learning, to reproach. Men 
have seen that it might exist without mental superiority, with- 
out vigour, without good taste, and without utility. But in 
such cases classical learning has only not inspired natural tal- 
ent ; or, at most, it has but made original feebleness of intellect, 
and natural bluntness of perception, something more conspicu- 
ous. The question, after all, if it be a question, is, whether 
literature, ancient as well as modern, does not assist a good 
understanding, improve natural good taste, add polished armour 
to native strength, and render its possessor, not only more ca- 
pable of deriving private happiness from contemplation and 
reflection, but more accomplished also for action in the affairs 
of life, and especially for public action. They whose memories 
we now honour were learned men ; but their learning was kept 
in its proper place, and made subservient to the uses and ob- 
jects of life. They were scholars, not common nor superficial ; 
but their scholarship was so in keeping with their character, so 
blended and inwrought, that careless observers, or bad judges, 
not seeing an ostentatious display of it, might infer that it did 
not exist ; forgetting, or not knowing, that classical learning, in 
men who act in conspicuous public stations, perform duties 

4 In reference to the foregoing speech, I cannot do better than by quoting 
from Curtis's Life of Webster: "President Fillmore informs me that he once 
asked Mr. Webster, in familiar conversation, what authority he had for putting 
this" speech into the mouth of John Adams, the Congress at that period having 
always sat with closed doors. Mr. Webster replied that he had no authority for 
the sentiments of the speech excepting Mr. Adams's general character, and a 
letter he had written to his wife, that had frequently been published. After a 
short pause, Mr. Webster added : ■ I will tell you what is not generally known. 
I wrote that speech one morning in my library, and when it was finished my 
paper was wet with tears.' " 



506 WEBSTER. 

which exercise the faculty of writing, or address popular, delib- 
erative, or judicial bodies, is often felt where it is little seen, 
and sometimes felt more effectually because it is not seen at 
all. — Discourse on Adams and Jefferson. 



THE MURDER OF ME. WHITE. 5 

I AM little accustomed, Gentlemen, to the part which I am 
now attempting to perform. Hardly more than once or twice 
has it happened to me to be concerned on the side of the gov- 
ernment in any criminal prosecution whatever ; and never, until 
the present occasion, in any case affecting life. 

But I very much regret that it should have been thought nec- 
essary to suggest to you, that I am brought here to "hurry you 
against the law and beyond the evidence." 1 hope I have too 
much regard for justice, and too much respect for my own char- 
acter, to attempt either ; and, were I to make such attempt, I 
am sure that in this court nothing can be carried against the 
law, and that gentlemen, intelligent and just as you are, are 
not, by any power, to be hurried beyond the evidence. Though 
I could well have wished to shun this occasion, I have not felt 
at liberty to withhold my professional assistance, when it is sup- 

5 The argument from which this famous passage is taken was made to the 
jury, in August, 1830, at a special session of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 
held in Salem, for the trial of John F. and Joseph J. Knapp, charged with par- 
ticipating in the murder of Captain Joseph White. The deed of murder was 
actually committed by the hand of one Richard Crowninshield, who had been 
hired by the Knapps to do it for $1,000. While Crowninshield and the Knapps 
were in prison awaiting trial, J. J. Knapp, under a pledge of indemnity, made 
a full confession of the whole affair; and Crowninshield, having heard of this 
confession, soon after committed suicide in the prison. Knapp thereupon with- 
drew his confession, and refused to testify in the trial. This released the other 
party from the pledge ; and then J. F. Knapp was indicted as principal in the 
murder, and his brother as an accessary. Both of the Knapps were convicted 
of the crime, and executed. Webster was engaged by the prosecuting officers 
of the State to aid them in the case. The opposing counsel were Mr. Franklin 
Dexter and Mr, W. H. Gardiner, men eminent for ability and learning, who did 
their utmost in the defence. Some objection was made to Webster's having a 
hand in the trial, but was overruled; and Mr. Dexter complained that he had 
been brought there to " hurry the jury against the law and beyond the evidence." 
The portion of Webster's argument here given has stood the hardest trial, per- 
haps, that any thing of the sort can undergo : it has been a favourite piece in 
school and college declamation ever since; and would have been staled long ere 
this, if any thing could stale it. But no frequency of such use can take the spirit 
and freshness out of it And it gains much in effect from a full knowledge of the 
circumstances of the case. 



THE MURDER OP MR. WHITE. 507 

posed that I may be In some degree useful in investigating and 
discovering the truth respecting this most extraordinary mur- 
der. It has seemed to be a duty incumbent on me, as on every 
other citizen, to do my best and my utmost to bring to light the 
perpetrators of this crime. Against the prisoner at the bar, as 
an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would 
not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect 
to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this 
deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how great 
soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest 
an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a 
hand in executing, this deed of midnight assassination, may be 
brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of pub- 
lic justice. 

Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case. In some respects, 
it has hardly a precedent anywhere ; certainly none in our 
New England history. This bloody drama exhibited no sud- 
denly-excited, ungovernable rage. The actors in it were not 
surprised by any lion-like temptation springing upon their vir- 
tue, and overcoming it, before resistance could begin. Nor did 
they do the deed to glut savage vengeance, or satiate long-settled 
and deadly hate. It was a cool, calculating, mone y-making mur- 
der. It was all "hire and salary, not revenge." It was the 
weighing of money against life ; the counting-out of so many 
pieces of silver against so many ounces of blood. 

An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own 
house and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly 
murder for mere pay. Truly, here is a new lesson for painters 
and poets. Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of mur- 
der, if he will show it as it has been exhibited, where such 
example Avas last to have been looked for, in the very bosom of 
our ISTew England society, let him not give it the grim visage 
of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with 
settled hate, and the bloodshot eye emitting livid fires of mal- 
ice. Let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless 
demon ; a picture in repose, rather in action ; not so much an 
example of human nature in its depravity, and in its par- 
oxysms of crime, as an infernal being, a fiend, in the ordinary 
display and development of his character. 

The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and 
steadiness equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. 
The circumstances now clear in evidence spread out the whole 
scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, 
and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom 
sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him 
in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through 



508 



WEBSTER. 



the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. 
With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the 
Moon ; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the 
door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock by soft and 
continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise ; 
and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room is 
uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the 
innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams 
of the Moon, resting on the grey locks of his aged temple, show 
him where to strike. The fatal blow is given ! and the victim 
passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep 
to the repose of death ! It is the assassin's purpose to make 
sure work ; and he yet plies the dagger, though it is obvious 
that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He 
even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the 
heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard ! 
To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse ! He 
feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer ! It is ac- 
complished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps 
to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and es- 
capes. He has done the murder. JSTo eye has seen him, no ear 
has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe ! 

Ah ! Gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret 
can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither 
nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is 
safe. Not to speak of that Eye which glances through all dis- 
guises, and beholds every thing as in the splendour of noon, 
such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection even by 
men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." 
True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so gov- 
ern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven by 
shedding man's blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. 
Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discov- 
ery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand 
eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every cir- 
cumstance, connected with the time and place ; a thousand ears 
catch every whisper ; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell 
on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the 
slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the 
guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself ; or 
rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to 
itself. It labours under its guilty possession, and knows not 
what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the 
residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a 
torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A 
vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assist- 



THE MURDER OF MR. WHITE. 509 

ance, either from Heaven or Earth. The secret which the 
murderer possesses soon comes to possess him ; and, like the 
evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him 
whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to 
his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole 
world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears 
its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become 
his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his cour- 
age, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without 
begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entan- 
gle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to 
burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed ; there is 
no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. 

Much has been said, on this occasion, of the excitement which 
has existed, and still exists, and of the extraordinary measures 
taken to discover and punish the guilty. !N"o doubt there has 
been, and is, much excitement, and strange indeed it would 
be, had it been otherwise. Should not all the peaceable and 
well-disposed naturally feel concerned, and naturally exert 
themselves to bring to punishment the authors of this secret 
assassination ? Was it a thing to be slept upon or forgotten ? 
Did you, Gentlemen, sleep quite as quietly in your beds after 
this murder as before? Was it not a case for rewards, for 
meetings, for committees, for the united efforts of all the good, 
to find out a band of murderous conspirators, of midnight ruff- 
ians, and to bring them to the bar of justice and law? If this 
be excitement, is it an unnatural or an improper excitement ? 

It seems to me, Gentlemen, that there are appearances of an- 
other feeling, of a very different nature and character; not 
very extensive, I would hope, but still there is too much evi- 
dence of its existence. Such is human nature, that some per- 
sons lose their abhorrence of crime in their admiration of its 
magnificent exhibitions. Ordinary vice is reprobated by them, 
but extraordinary guilt, exquisite wickedness, the high nights 
and poetry of crime, seize on the imagination, and lead them to 
forget the depths of the guilt, in admiration of the excellence of 
the performance, or the unequalled atrocity of the purpose. 
There are those in our day who have made great use of this in- 
firmity of our nature, and by means of it done infinite injury to 
the cause of good morals. They have affected not only the 
taste, but, I fear, also the principles, of the young, the heedless, 
and the imaginative, by the exhibition of interesting and beau- 
tiful monsters. They render depravity attractive, sometimes 
by the polish of its manners, and sometimes by its very extrava- 
gance ; and study to show off crime under all the advantages of 
cleverness and dexterity. Gentlemen, this is an extraordinary 



510 



WEBSTER. 



murder, but it is still a murder. We are not to lose ourselves 
in wonder at its origin, or in gazing on its cool and skilful exe- 
cution. We are to detect and to punish it ; and while we pro- 
ceed with caution against the prisoner, and are to be sure that 
we do not visit on his head the offences of others, we are yet to 
consider that we are dealing with a case of most atrocious crime, 
which has not the slightest circumstance about it to soften 
its enormity. It is murder; deliberate, concerted, malicious, 
murder. 



The learned counsel for the defendant are more concerned, 
they assure us, for the law itself than even for their client. 
Your decision in this case, they say, will stand as a precedent. 
Gentlemen, we hope it will. We hope it will be a precedent 
both of candour and intelligence, of fairness and of firmness ; a 
precedent of good sense and honest purpose pursuing their in- 
vestigation discreetly, rejecting loose generalities, exploring all 
the circumstances, weighing each, in search of truth, and em- 
bracing and declaring the truth when found. 

It is said that "laws are made, not for the punishment of the 
guilty, but for the protection of the innocent." This is not 
quite accurate perhaps ; but, if so, we hope they will be so ad- 
ministered as to give that protection. But who are the inno- 
cent whom the law would protect? Gentlemen, Joseph White 
was innocent. They are innocent who, having lived in the fear 
of God through the day, wish to sleep in His peace through the 
night, in their own beds. The law is established, that those 
who live quietly may sleep quietly ; that they who do no harm 
may feel none. The gentleman can think of none that are in- 
nocent except the prisoner at the bar, not yet convicted. Is a 
proved conspirator in murder innocent? What is innocence? 
How much stained with blood, how reckless in crime, how deep 
in depravity may it be, and yet remain innocence ? The law is 
made, if we would speak with entire accuracy, to protect the in- 
nocent by punishing the guilty. But there are those innocent 
out of court, as well as in ; innocent citizens not suspected of 
crime, as well as innocent prisoners at the bar. 

The criminal law is not founded in a principle of vengeance. 
It does not punish, that it may inflict suffering. The humanity 
of the law feels and regrets every pain it causes, every hour of 
restraint it imposes, and more deeply still every life it forfeits. 
But it seeks to deter from crime by the example of punishment. 
This is its true, and only true main object. It restrains the lib- 
erty of the few offenders, that the many who do not offend may" 
enjoy their liberty. It takes the life of the murderer, that other 
murders may not be committed. The law might open the jails, 



THE MURDER OF ME. WHITE. 511 

and at once set free all persons accused of offences ; and it 
ought to do so, if it could be made certain that no other offences 
would hereafter be committed ; because it punishes, not to sat- 
isfy any desire to inflict pain, but simply to prevent the repeti- 
tion of crimes. When the guilty, therefore, are not punished, 
the law has so far failed of its purpose ; the safety of the inno- 
cent is so far endangered. Every unpunished murder takes 
away something from the security of every man's life. And 
whenever a jury, through whimsical and ill-founded scruples, 
suffer the guilty to escape, they make themselves answerable 
for the augmented danger of the innocent. 



CHARACTER OF LORD BYRON". 

I have read Tom Moore's first volume of Byron's Life. 
Whatever human imagination shall hereafter picture of a hu- 
man being, I shall believe it all within the bounds of credibility. 
Byron's case shows that fact sometimes runs by all fancy, as a 
steamboat passes a scow at anchor. I have tried hard to find 
something in him to like besides his genius and his wit, but 
there was no other likable quality about him. He was an in- 
carnation of demonism. He is the only man, in English history, 
for a hundred years, who has boasted of infidelity, and of every 
practical vice, not included in what may be termed (what his 
biographer does term) meanness. Lord Bolingbroke, in his 
most extravagant youthful sallies, and the wicked Lord Little- 
ton, were saints to him. All Moore can say is, each of his vices 
had some virtue or some prudence near it, which in some sort 
checked it. Well, if that were not so in all, who would escape 
hanging ? The biographer, indeed, says his worst conduct must 
not be judged by an ordinary standard ! And this is true, if a 
favourable decision is looked for. Many excellent reasons are 
given for his being a bad husband, the sum of which is, that he 
was a very bad man. I confess, I was rejoiced then, and am re- 
joiced now, that he was driven out of England by public scorn ; 
for his vices were not in his passions, but in his principles. He 
denied all religion and all virtue from the house-top. Dr. John- 
son says there is merit in maintaining good principles, though 
the preacher is seduced into a violation of them. This is true. 
Good theory is something. But a theory of living, and of dy- 
ing, too, made up of the elements of hatred to religion, con- 
tempt of morals, and defiance of the opinion of all the decent 
part of the public, — when, before, has a man of letters avowed 



512 WEBSTER. 

it? If Milton were alive, to recast certain prominent characters 
in his great epic, he could embellish them with new traits, with- 
out violating probability.— From a Letter to Mr. George Ticknor, 
1830. 



CHARACTER OF JUDGE STORY. 6 

Your solemn announcement, Mr. Chief Justice, has con- 
firmed the sad intelligence which had already reached us 
through the public channels of information, and deeply affected 
us all. 

Joseph Story, one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, and for many years the presiding 
judge of this Circuit, died on Wednesday evening last, at his 
house in Cambridge, wanting only a few days for the comple- 
tion of the sixty-sixth year of his age. 

Mr. Chief Justice, one sentiment pervades us all. It is that 
of the most profound and penetrating grief, mixed, nevertheless, 
with an assured conviction that the great man whom we deplore 
is yet with us and in the midst of us. He hath not wholly died. 
He lives in the affections of friends and kindred, and in the 
high regard of the community. He lives in our remembrance 
of his social virtues, his warm and steady friendships, and the 
vivacity and richness of his conversation. He lives, and will 
live still more permanently, by his words of written wisdom, by 
the results of his vast researches and attainments, by his im- 
perishable legal judgments, and by those juridical disquisitions 
which have stamped his name, all over the civilized world, with 
the character of a commanding authority. 

Mr. Chief Justice, there are consolations which arise to miti- 
gate our loss, and shed the influence of resignation over un- 
feigned and heart-felt sorrow. We are all penetrated with 
gratitude to God, that the deceased lived so long ; that he did 
so much for himself, his friends, the country, and the world; 
that his lamp went out, at last, without unsteadiness or flicker- 
ing. He continued to exercise every power of his mind without 
dimness or obscuration, and every affection of his heart with no 
abatement of energy or warmth, till death drew an impenetrable 

6 This eminent jurist and amiable man died on the 10th of September, 1845. 
On the 12th, the day of his funeral, the Suffolk Bar held a meeting in the Circuit 
Court Room, Boston, to commemorate the sad event, Chief Justice Shaw, of the 
Supreme Court of Massachusetts, presiding. I here give the greater part, as 
much as I can well find space for, of the noble and beautiful eulogium pro- 
nounced by Webster on that occasion. 



CHARACTER OF JUDGE STORY. 513 

veil between us and him. Indeed, he seems to us now, as in 
truth he is, not extinguished or ceasing to be, but only with- 
drawn ; as the clear Sun goes down at its setting, not darkened, 
but only no longer seen. 

Sir, there is no purer pride of country than that in which we 
may indulge when we see ximerica paying back the great debt 
of civilization, learning, and science to Europe. In this high 
return of light for light and mind for mind, in this august reck- 
oning and accounting between the intellects of nations, Joseph 
Story was destined by Providence to act, and did act, an impor- 
tant part. Acknowledging, as we all acknowledge, our obliga- 
tions to the original sources of English law, as well as of civil 
liberty, we have seen in our generation copious and salutary 
streams turning and running backward, replenishing their origi- 
nal fountains, and giving a fresher and a brighter green to the 
fields of English jurisprudence. By a sort of reversed heredi- 
tary transmission, the mother, without envy or humiliation, 
acknowledges that she has received a valuable and cherished 
inheritance from the daughter. The profession in England 
admits, with frankness and candour, and with no feeling but 
that of respect and admiration, that he whose voice we have so 
recently heard within these walls, but shall now hear no more, 
was, of all men who have yet appeared, most fitted by the com- 
prehensiveness .of his mind, and the vast extent and accuracy 
of his attainments, to compare the codes of nations, to trace 
their differences to difference of origin, climate, or religious or 
political institutions, and to exhibit, nevertheless, their concur- 
rence in those great principles upon which the system of human 
civilization rests. 

Justice, Sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the 
ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations to- 
gether. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly 
honoured, there is a foundation for social security, general hap- 
piness, and the improvement and progress of our race. And 
whoever labours on this edifice with usefulness and distinction, 
whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its pillars, adorns 
its entablatures, or contributes to raise its august dome still 
higher in the skies, connects himself, in name and fame and 
character, with that which is and must be as durable as the 
frame of human society. 

This is not the occasion, Sir, nor is it for me to consider and 
discuss at length the character and merits of Mr. Justice Story, 
as a writer or a judge. The performance of that duty, with which 
this Bar will no doubt charge itself, must be deferred to another 
opportunity, and will be committed to abler hands. But in the 
homage paid to his memory, one part may come with peculiar 



514 . WEBSTER. 

propriety and emphasis from ourselves. We have known him 
in private life. We have seen him descend from the bench, and 
mingle in our friendly circles. We have known his manner of 
life, from his youth up. We can bear witness to the strict up- 
rightness and purity of his character, his simplicity and unos- 
tentatious habits, the ease and affability of his intercourse, his 
remarkable vivacity amidst severe labours, the cheerful and 
animating tones of his conversation, and his fast fidelity to 
friends. Some of us, also, can testify to his large and liberal 
charities, not ostentatious or casual, but systematic and silent, 
— dispensed almost without showing the hand, and falling and 
distilling comfort and happiness, like the dews of heaven. But 
we can testify, also, that in all his pursuits and employments, 
in all his recreations, in all his commerce with the world, and in 
his intercourse with the circle of his friends, the predominance 
of his judicial character was manifest. He never forgot the 
ermine which he wore. The judge, the judge, the useful and 
distinguished judge, was the great picture which he kept con- 
stantly before his eyes, and to a resemblance of which all his 
efforts, all his thoughts, all his life, were devoted. 

Mr. Chief Justice, one may live as a conqueror, a king, or a 
magistrate ; but he must die as a man. The bed of death 
brings every human being to his pure individuality ; to the in- 
tense contemplation of that deepest and most solemn of all 
relations, — the relation between the creature and his Creator. 
Here it is that fame and renown cannot assist us ; that all ex- 
ternal things must fail to aid us ; that even friends, affection, 
and human love and devotedness, cannot succour us. This re- 
lation, the true foundation of all duty, a relation perceived and 
felt by conscience, and confirmed by Eevelation, our illustrious 
friend, now deceased, always acknowledged. He reverenced 
the Scriptures of truth, honoured the pure morality which they 
teach, and clung to the hopes of future life which they impart. 
He beheld enough in Mature, in himself, and in all that can be 
known of things seen, to feel assured that there is a Supreme 
Power, without whose providence not a sparrow falleth to the 
ground. To this gracious Being he trusted himself for time 
and for eternity ; and the last words of his lips ever heard by 
mortal ears were a fervent supplication to his Maker to take 
him to Himself. 



KELIGION AS AN ELEMENT OF GREATNESS. 515 



RELIGION AS AN ELEMENT OF GREATNESS. 7 

Political eminence and professional fame fade away and 
die with all things earthly. Nothing of character is really per- 
manent but virtue and personal worth. These remain. What- 
ever of excellence is wrought into the soul itself belongs to 
both worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely to 
this life ; it points to another world. Political or professional 
eminence cannot last for ever ; but a conscience void of offence 
before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, 
therefore, is a necessary and indispensable element in any great 
human character. There is no living without it. Religion is 
the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to 
His throne. If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats 
away, a worthless atom in the Universe ; its proper attractions 
all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but 
darkness, desolation, and death. A man with no sense of re- 
ligious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe, in such terse 
but terrific language, as living "without God in the world." 
Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his 
duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far 
away, from the purpose of his creation. 

A mind like Mr. Mason's, active, thoughtful, penetrating, se- 
date, could not but meditate deeply on the condition of man 
below, and feel its responsibilities. He could not look on this 
mighty system, "this universal frame, thus wondrous fair,'* 
without feeling that it was created and upheld by an Intelli- 
gence to which all other intelligences must be responsible. I am 
bound to say, that in the course of my life I never met with an in- 
dividual, in any profession or condition of life, who always spoke, 
and always thought, with such awful reverence of the power 
and presence of God. No irreverence, no lightness, even no too 
familiar allusion to God or His attributes, ever escaped his lips. 
The very notion of a Supreme Being was, with him, made up 
of awe and solemnity. It filled the whole of his great mind 

7 The Hon. Jeremiah Mason, one of the greatest lawyers in the United States, 
died at his home in Boston, on the 14th of October, 1849, having reached his 
eighty-first year. He and Webster had for many years been knit together in a 
friendship as strong and as pure as two great manly hearts are capable of. On 
the 14th of November following, at the opening of the Supreme Judicial Court, 
a series of resolutions, expressing the sense of the Suffolk Bar, was presented, 
and Webster gave, at considerable length, a review of the life and character of 
his departed friend. I here reproduce but a small portion of that eloquent and 
affecting discourse,— a passage of which no more need be said than that it ia 
well worthy of the illustrious speaker. 



516 WEBSTER. 

with the strongest emotions. A man like him, with all his 
proper sentiments and sensibilities alive in him, must, in this 
state of existence, have something to believe and something to 
hope for ; or else, as life is advancing to its close and parting, 
all is heart-sinking and oppression. Depend upon it, whatever 
may be the mind of an old man, old age is only really happy 
when, on feeling the enjoyments of this world pass away, it 
begins to lay a stronger hold on those of another. — Mr. Mason's 
religious sentiments and feelings were the crowning glories of 
his character. 



EACH TO INTERPRET THE LAW FOE HIMSELF. 

In that important document upon which it seems to be the 
President's fate to stand or to fall before the American people, 
the veto message, he holds the following language: "Each pub- 
lic officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears 
that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is un- 
derstood by others." The general adoption of the sentiments 
expressed in this sentence would dissolve our government. It 
would raise every man's private opinions into a standard for his 
own conduct ; and there certainly is, there can be, no govern- 
ment, where every man is to judge for himself of his own rights 
and his own obligations. Where every one is his own arbiter, 
force, and not law, is the governing power. He who may judge 
for himself, and decide for himself, must execute his own decis- 
ions ; and this is the law of force. I confess it strikes me with 
astonishment, that so wild, so disorganizing a sentiment should 
be uttered by a President of the United States. I should think 
it must have escaped from its author through want of reflec- 
tion, or from the habit of little reflection on such subjects, if I 
could suppose it possible that, on a question exciting so much 
public attention, and of so much national importance, any such 
extraordinary doctrine could find its way, 'but by inadver- 
tence, into a formal and solemn public act. Standing as it 
does, it affirms a proposition which would effectually repeal all 
constitutional and all legal obligations. The Constitution de- 
clares that every public officer, in the State governments as well 
as in the general government, shall take an oath to support the 
Constitution of the United States. This is all. Would it not 
have cast an air of ridicule on the whole provision, if the Con- 
stitution had gone on to add the words, "as he understands 
it" ? What could come nearer to a solemn farce, than to bind 
a man by oath, and still leave him to be his own interpreter of 



EACH TO INTERPRET THE LAW FOR HIMSELF. 517 

his own obligation? Those who are to execute the laws have 
no more a license to construe them for themselves, than those 
whose only duty is to obey them. Public officers are bound to 
support the Constitution ; private citizens are bound to obey 
it ; and there is no more indulgence granted to the public offi- 
cer to support the Constitution only as he understands it, than to 
a private citizen to obey it only as he understands it ; and what 
is true of the Constitution, in this respect, is equally true of 
any law. Laws are to be executed, and to be obeyed, not as in- 
dividuals may interpret them, but according to public, authori- 
tative interpretation and adjudication. The sentiment of the 
message would abrogate the obligation of the whole criminal 
code. If every man is to judge of the Constitution and the 
laws for himself, if he is to obey and support them only as ho 
may say he understands them, a revolution, I think, would 
take place in the administration of justice ; and discussions 
about the law of treason, murder, and arson should be ad- 
dressed, not to the judicial bench, but to those who might stand 
charged with such offences. The object of discussion should 
be, if we run out this notion to its natural extent, to convince 
the culprit himself how he ought to understand the law. 

How is it possible that a sentiment so wild and so dangerous, 
so encouraging to all who feel a desire to oppose the laws, and 
to impair the Constitution, should have been uttered by the 
President of the United States at this eventful and critical mo- 
ment? Are we not threatened with dissolution of the Union? 
Are we not told that the laws of the government shall be 
openly and directly resisted ? Is not the whole country look- 
ing, with the utmost anxiety, to what may be the result of these 
threatened courses? And at this very moment, so full of peril 
to the State, the chief magistrate puts forth opinions and senti- 
ments as truly subversive of all government, as absolutely in 
conflict with the authority of the Constitution, as the wildest 
theories of nullification. I have very little regard for the law 
or the logic of nullification. But there is not an individual in 
its ranks, capable of putting two ideas together, who, if you will 
grant him the principles of the veto message, cannot defend all 
that nullification has ever threatened. 8 — Speech at Worcester, 
Oct, 1832. 

8 This brief but most wise passage moves me to comment a little on what I 
have often heard maintained as a settled axiom in morals, namely, that " every 
man is the ultimate judge of his own duty." As all moralists agree that rights 
and duties go together, it follows, of course, that every man is the ultimate 
judge of his own rights; that is, the supreme judge in his own case. Now, to 
prevent men from being judges in their own case, is, I take it, the main purpose 
and business of all civil government; and this because men are notoriously 



518 WEBSTER. 



IKKEDEEMABLE PAPER. 

I am well aware that bank credit may be abused. I know 
that bank paper may become excessive ; that depreciation will 
then follow ; and that the evils, the losses, and the frauds con- 
sequent on a disordered currency fall on the rich and the poor 
together, but with especial weight of ruin on the poor. I know 
that the system of bank credit must always rest on a specie 
basis, and that it constantly needs to be strictly guarded and 
properly restrained ; and it may be so guarded and restrained. 
~We need not give up the good which belongs to it, through fear 
of the evils which may follow from its abuse. We have the 
power to take security against these evils. It is our business, 
as statesmen, to adopt that security ; it is our business, not to 
prostrate or attempt to prostrate the system, but to use those 
means of precaution, restraint, and correction, which experi- 
ence has sanctioned, and which are ready at our hands. 

very bad judges in their own case, so much so, that human society cannot stib- 
sist on that basis. In other words, this axiom means nothing less than that 
every man is to be a sovereign law unto himself, and is to do just as he has a 
mind to ; or, which comes to the same thing, that every man is to clothe his own 
judgment with Divine authority. What is this but resolving all obligation, 
duty, law, into individual will? To be sure, conscience is individual, and we 
all admit the supremacy of conscience in its proper sphere. But conscience 
grows and lives only in the recognition and the strength of an external law: 
cut off that recognition, and conscience must soon die out. And that external 
law is a matter of 6ocial prescription, not of individual judgment or will. Or, 
again, conscience infers the distinction of right and wrong; but it does not tell 
us what things are right and what are wrong : it supposes the existence of the 
moral law, but does not teach us what that law is. To authenticate and define 
that law, is the office partly of Revelation, partly of the collective reason and 
experience of mankind. And it is in vain that you \mdertake to carry the au- 
thority of Revelation above or beyond the authority of that collective reason and 
experience. In other words, God speaks to us as authentically and as impera- 
tively through social and civil institutions, through parents, teachers, and rulers, 
as in Scripture. And conscience binds us as strongly to obey the .rulings of the 
former as of the latter; nor, if it be set free from those, can it possibly be held 
to these. Let the axiom in question be thoroughly reduced to practice, and 
humanity will inevitably be carried on to suicide : any people working the 
principle fairly through from speculation into life will needs die of sheer law- 
lessness; for it is nothing less than acting " as if a man Avere author of himself, 
and knew no other kin." If, as I am told, this doctrine is generally held and 
taught by the clergy of New England, then I can only say, God help New 
England! for, unless He specially interpose, babies will keep growing scarcer, 
and divorces more frequent, till the race shall have run itself utterly into the 
ground. Most assuredly, as regards the social and relative rights and duties, 
society is the ultimate judge; and for the individual conscience to declare itself 
above or independent of social and civil prescription, is literally inhuman.— 
See, on the subject, a passage from Burke, pages 228-231. 



I 



IRREDEEMABLE PAPER. 519 

It would be to our everlasting reproach, it would be placing us 
below the general level of the intelligence of civilized States, to 
admit that we cannot contrive means to enjoy the benefits of 
bank circulation, and of avoiding, at the same time, its dangers. 
Indeed, Sir, no contrivance is necessary. It is contrivance, and 
the love of contrivance, that spoil all. We are destroying our- 
selves by a remedy which no evil called for. We are ruining 
perfect health by nostrums and quackery. "We have lived, 
hitherto, under a well-constructed, practical, and beneficial sys- 
tem ; a system not surpassed by any in the world ; and it seems 
to me to be presuming largely, largely indeed, on the credulity 
and self-denial of the people, to rush with such sudden and im- 
petuous haste into new schemes and new theories, to overturn 
and annihilate all that we have so long found useful. 

Our system has hitherto been one in which paper has been 
circulating on the strength of a specie basis ; that is to say, 
when every bank note was convertible into specie at the will of 
the holder. This has been our guard against excess. While 
banks are bound to redeem their bills by paying gold and silver 
on demand, and are at all times able to do this, the currency is 
safe and convenient. Such a currency is not paper money, in 
the odious sense. It is not like the continental paper of. Revo- 
lutionary times ; it is not like the worthless bills of banks which 
have suspended specie payments. On the contrary, it is the 
representative of gold and silver, and convertible into gold and 
silver on demand, and therefore answers the purposes of gold 
and silver ; and, so long as its credit is in this way sustained, it 
is the cheapest, the best, and the most convenient circulating 
medium. I have already endeavoured to warn the country 
against irredeemable paper ; against bank paper, when banks 
do not pay specie for their own notes ; against that miserable, 
abominable, and fraudulent policy which attempts to give value 
to any paper, of any bank, one single moment longer than such 
paper is redeemable on demand in gold and silver. And I 
wish most solemnly and earnestly to repeat that warning. I 
see danger of that state of things ahead. I see imminent dan- 
ger that more or fewer of the State banks will stop specie pay- 
ments. The late measure of the Secretary, 9 and the infatuation 
with which it seems to be supported, tend directly and strongly 
to that result. Under pretence, then, of a design to return to a 
currency which shall be all specie, we are likely to have a cur- 
rency in which there shall be no specie at all. We are in dan- 
ger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper,— mere 

9 This was the removal of the deposits by Mr. Taney, then Secretary of the 
Treasury.— See Sketch of Webster's Life, page 331. 






520 WEBSTER. 

paper, representing not gold nor silver ; no, Sir, representing 
nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, 
cheated creditors, and a ruined people. This, I fear, may be 
the consequence, already alarmingly near, of this attempt — 
unwise, if it be real, and grossly fraudulent if it be only pre- 
tended — of establishing an exclusive hard-money currency ! — 
Speech on the Removal of the Deposits, Feb., 1834. 



The currency of the country is at all times a most important 
political object. A sound currency is an essential and indispen- 
sable security for the fruits of industry and honest enterprise. 
Every man of property or industry, every man who desires to 
preserve what he honestly possesses, or to obtain what he can 
honestly earn, has a direct interest in maintaining a safe circu- 
lating medium ; such a medium as shall be a real and sub- 
stantial representative of property, not liable to vibrate with 
opinions, not subject to be blown up or blown down by the 
breath of speculation, but made stable and secure by its imme- 
diate relation to that which the whole world regards as of a 
permanent value. A disordered currency is one of the greatest 
of political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the 
support of the social system, and encourages propensities de- 
structive of its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, 
and economy ; and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance 
and speculation. Of all the contrivances for cheating the la- 
bouring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than 
that which deludes them with paper money. This is the most 
effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man's field by the 
sweat of the poor man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, 
excessive taxation, these bear lightly on the happiness of the 
mass of the community, compared with fraudulent currencies, 
and the robberies committed by depreciated paper. Our own 
history has recorded for our instruction enough, and more than 
enough, of the demoralizing tendency, the injustice, and the 
intolerable oppression, on the virtuous and well disposed, of a 
degraded paper "currency, authorized by law, or in any way 
countenanced by government. 



BENEFITS OF THE CEEDIT SYSTEM. 521 



BENEFITS OF THE CEEDIT SYSTEM. 

Six months ago a state of things existed highly prosperous 
and advantageous to the country, hut liable to be injuriously 
affected by precisely such a cause as has now been put into op- 
eration upon it. Business was active and carried to a great ex- 
tent. Commercial credit was expanded, and the circulation 
of money was large. This circulation, being of paper, of course 
rested on credit ; and this credit was founded on banking capi- 
tal and bank deposits. The public revenues, from the time of 
their collection to the time of their disbursement, were in the 
bank and its branches, and, like other deposits, contributed to 
the means of discount. Between the Bank of the United States 
and the State banks there was a degree of watchfulness, per- 
haps of rivalry ; but there was no enmity, no hostility. All 
moved in their own proper spheres, harmoniously and in order. 

The Secretary disturbed this state of peace. He broke up all 
the harmony of the system. By suddenly withdrawing all the 
public moneys from the Bank of the United States, he forced 
that bank to an immediate correspondent curtailment of its 
loans and discounts. It was obliged to strengthen itself ; and 
the State banks, taking the alarm, were obliged to strengthen 
themselves also by similar measures ; so that the amount of 
credit actually existing, and on which men were doing business, 
was all at once greatly diminished. Bank accommodations were 
withdrawn ; men could no longer fulfil their engagements by 
the customary means ; property fell in value ; thousands failed ; 
many thousands more maintained their individual credit by 
enormous sacrifices ; and all, being alarmed for the future, as 
well as distressed for the present, forbore from new transac- 
tions and new engagements. Finding enough to do to stand 
still, they do not attempt to go forward. This deprives the in- 
dustrious and labouring classes of their occupations, and brings 
want and misery to their doors. This, Sir, is a short recital of 
cause and effect. This is the history of the first six months of 
the ''experiment." x 

Mr. President, the recent measures of the Secretary, and the 
opinions which are said to be avowed by those*who approve and 
support them, threaten a wild and ruthless attack on the com- 
mercial credit of the country, that most delicate and at the 
same time most important agent in producing general prosper- 

1 The experiment which President Jackson undertook to carry through, 
upon the currency and the financial system of the country. The President was 
wont to speak of it rather exultingly as M my experiment." See Sketch of Web- 
ster's Life, page 331. ; 



WEBSTER. 



ity. Commercial credit is the creation of modern times, and be- 
longs, in its highest perfection, only to the most enlightened and 
best-governed nations. In the primitive ages of commerce 
article is exchanged for article, without the use of money or 
credit. This is simple barter. But, in its progress, a symbol of 
property, a common measure of value, is introduced, to facili- 
tate the exchanges of property ; and this may be iron, or any 
other article fixed by law or by consent, but has generally been 
gold and silver. This, certainly, is a great advance beyond sim- 
ple barter, but no greater than has been gained, in modern 
times, by proceeding from the mere use of money to the use of 
credit. Credit is the vital air of the system of modern com- 
merce. It has done more, a thousand times, to enrich nations, 
than all the mines of all the world. It has excited labour, stim- 
ulated manufactures, pushed commerce over every sea, and 
brought every nation, every kingdom, and every small tribe, 
among the races of men, to be known to all the rest. It has 
raised armies, equipped navies, and, triumphing over the gross 
power of mere numbers, it has established national superiority 
on the foundation of intelligence, wealth, and well-directed in- 
dustry. Credit is to money what money is to articles of mer- 
chandise. As hard money represents property, so credit repre- 
sents hard money ; and it is capable of supplying the place of 
money so completely, that there are writers of distinction, espe- 
cially of the Scotch school, who insist that no hard money is 
necessary for the interests of commerce. I am not of that 
opinion. 

I hold the immediate convertibility of bank-notes into specie 
to be an indispensable security for their retaining their value ; 
but, consistently with this security, and indeed founded upon 
it, credit becomes the great agent of exchange. It is allowed 
that it increases consumption by anticipating products ; and 
that it supplies present wants out of future means. And as it 
circulates commodities without the actual use of gold and sil- 
ver, it not only saves much by doing away with the constant 
transportation of the precious metals from place to place, but 
accomplishes exchanges with a degree of despatch and punctu- 
ality not otherwise to be attained. All bills of exchange, all 
notes running upon time, as well as the paper circulation of the 
banks, belong to the system of commercial credit. They are 
parts of one great whole. And, Sir, unless we are to reject the 
lights of experience, and to repudiate the benefits which other 
nations enjoy, and which we ourselves have hitherto enjoyed, 
we should protect this system with unceasing watchfulness, 
taking care, on the one hand, to give it full and fair play, and, 
on the other, to guard it against dangerous excess. We shall 



BENEFITS OF THE CKEDIT SYSTEM. 523 

show ourselves unskilful and unfaithful statesmen, if we do 
not keep clear of extremes on both sides. 

It is very true that commercial credit, and the system of 
banking, as a part of it, does furnish a substitute for capital. 
It is very true that this system enables men to do business, to 
some extent, on borrowed capital ; and those who wish to ruin 
all who make use of borrowed capital act wisely to that end by 
decrying it. 2 

This commercial credit, Sir, depends on wise laws, steadily 
administered. Indeed, the best-governed countries are always 
the richest. With good political systems, natural disadvan- 
tages and the competition of all the world may be defied. 
"Without such systems, climate, soil, position, and every thing 
else, may favour the progress of wealth, and yet nations be 
poor. What but bad laws and bad government has retarded 
the progress of commerce, credit, and wealth in the peninsula 
of Spain and Portugal, a part of Europe distinguished for its 
natural advantages, and especially suited by its position for an 
extensive commerce, with the sea on three sides of it, and as 
many good harbours as all the rest of Europe? The whole 
history of commerce shows that it flourishes or fades just in 
proportion as property, credit, and the fruits of labour are 
protected by free and just political systems. Credit cannot ex- 
ist under arbitrary and rapacious governments, and commerce 
cannot exist without credit. Tripoli and Tunis and Algiers are 
countries, above all others, in which hard money is indispen- 
sable ; because, under such governments, nothing is valuable 
which cannot be secreted and hoarded. And as government 
rises in the scale of intelligence and liberty, from these bar- 
barous despotisms to the highest rank of free States, its pro- 
gress is marked, at every step, by a higher degree of security 
and of credit. This undeniable truth should make well- 
informed men ashamed to cry out against banks and banking, 
as being aristocratical, oppressive to the poor, or partaking of 
the character of dangerous monopoly. Banks are a part of the 
great system of commercial credit, and have done much, under 
the influence of good government, to aid and elevate that 
credit. What is their history? Where do we first find them? 
Do they make their first appearance in despotic governments, 
and show themselves as inventions of power to oppress the 
people ? The first bank was that of Venice ; the second, that 
of Genoa. From the example of these republics, they were 
next established in Holland and the free city of Hamburg. 

2 "They who trade on borrowed capital ought to break," was a saying as- 
cribed to President Jackson, and was much commented on at the time as a 
strange thing to be uttered by a prince of the Democracy. 






524 WEBSTER. 

England followed these examples, but not until she had been 
delivered from the tyranny of the Stuarts, by the revolution of 
16S8. It was William the Deliverer, and not William the Con- 
queror, that established the Bank of England. Who supposes 
that a Bank of England could have existed in the times of 
Empson and Dudley ? 3 Who supposes that it could have lived 
under those ministers of Charles the Second who shut up the 
exchequer, or that its vaults could have been secure against 
the arbitrary power of the brother and successor of that 
monarch ? 

The history of banks belongs to the history of commerce and 
the general history of liberty. It belongs to the history of 
those causes which, in a long course of years, raised the middle 
and lower orders of society to a state of intelligence aud prop- 
erty, in spite of the iron sway of the feudal system. In what 
instance have they endangered liberty or overcome the laws ? 
Their very existence, on the contrary, depends on the security 
and the rule both of liberty and law. Why, Sir, have we not 
been taught, in our earliest reading, that to the birth of a 
commercial spirit, to associations for trade, to the guilds and 
companies formed in the towns, we are to look for the first 
emergence of liberty from the darkness of the Middle Ages; for 
the first faint blush of that morning which has grown brighter 
and brighter till the perfect day has come ? And it is just as 
reasonable to say that bills of exchange are dangerous to liberty, 
that promissory notes are dangerous to liberty, that the power 
of regulating the coin is dangerous to liberty, as that credit, 
and banking, as a part of credit, are dangerous to liberty. 

Sir, I hardly know a writer on these subjects who has not se- 
lected the United States as an eminent and striking instance, to 
show the advantages of well-established credit, and the benefit 
of its expansion, to a degree not incompatible with safety, by a 
paper circulation. Or, if they do not mention the United 
States, they describe just such a country ; that is to say, a new 
and fast-growing country. Hitherto, it must be confessed, our 
success has been great. With some breaks and intervals, our 
progress has been rapid, because our system has been good. 
We have preserved and fostered credit, till all have become 

3 King Henry the Seventh, near the close of his life, grew frightfully avari- 
cious aud rapacious, and Empson aud Dudley, as Barons of the Exchequer, 
■were the agents of his avarice and rapacity. Both were lawyers, of inventive 
heads and unfeeling hearts, who, says Lingard, "despoiled the subject to fill 
the King's coffers, and despoiled the King to enrich themselves." The measures 
used by them were extortionate and oppressive in the last degree; and the men 
became so odious to the people, that, early in the next reign, it was found neces- 
eary to put them to death. 



BENEFITS OF THE CEEDIT SYSTEM. 525 

interested in its further continuance and preservation. It has 
run deep and wide into our whole system of social life. Every 
man feels the vibration, when a blow is struck upon it. And 
this is the reason why nobody has escaped the influence of 
the Secretary's recent measure. While credit is delicate, sensi- 
tive, easily wounded, and more easily alarmed, it is also infi- 
nitely ramified, diversified, extending everywhere, and touching 
every thing. 

There never was a moment in which so many individuals felt 
their own private interest to be directly affected by what has 
been done, and what is to be done. There never was a mo- 
ment, therefore, in which so many straining eyes were turned 
towards Congress. It is felt, by every one, that this is a case in 
which the acts of the government come directly home to him, 
and produce either good or evil, every hour, upon his personal 
and private condition. And how is the public expectation 
met ? How is this intense, this agonized expectation answered ? 
I am grieved to say, I am ashamed to say, it is answered by 
declamation against the bank as a monster, by loud cries 
against a moneyed aristocracy, by pretended zeal for a hard- 
money system, and by professions of favour and regard to the 
poor. 

The poor ! We are waging war for the benefit of the poor I 
We slay that monster, the bank, that we may defeat the unjust 
purposes of the rich, and elevate and protect the poor ! And 
what is the effect of all this ? What happens to the poor, and 
all the middling classes, in consequence of this warfare? 
Where are they? Are they well fed, well clothed, well em- 
ployed, independent, happy, and grateful? They are all at the 
feet of the capitalists ; they are in the jaws of usury. If there 
be hearts of stone in human bosoms, they are at the mercy of 
those who have such hearts. Look to the rates of interest, 
mounting to twenty, thirty, fifty per cent. Sir, this measure of 
government has transferred millions upon millions of hard- 
earned property, in the form of extra interest, from the indus- 
trious classes to the capitalists, from the poor to the rich. And 
this is called putting down a moneyed aristocracy 1 Sir, there 
are thousands of families who have diminished, not their luxu- 
ries, not their amusements, but their meat and their bread, that 
they might be able to save their credit by paying enormous in- 
terest. And there are other thousands, who, having lost their 
employment, have lost every thing, and who yet hear, amidst 
the bitterness of their anguish, that the great motive of govern- 
ment is kindness to the poor ! *- Speech for continuing the Bank 
Charter, March, 1834 



526 WEBSTER. 



ABUSE OF EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE.* 

The extent of the patronage springing from the power of ap- 
pointment and removal is so great, that it brings a dangerous 
mass of private and personal interest into operation in all great 
public elections and public questions. This is a mischief which 
has reached, already, an alarming height. . The principle of re- 
publican governments, we are taught, is public virtue ; and 
whatever tends either to corrupt this principle, to debase it, or 
to weaken its force, tends, in the same degree, to the final over- 
throw of such governments. Our representative systems sup- 
pose that, in exercising the high right of suffrage, the greatest 
of all political rights, and in forming opinions on great public 
measures, men will act conscientiously, under the influence of 
public principle and patriotic duty ; and that, in supporting or 
opposing men or measures, there will be a general prevalence 
of honest, intelligent judgment and manly independence. 
These presumptions lie at the foundation of all hope of main- 
taining governments entirely popular. Whenever personal, in- 
dividual, or selfish motives influence the conduct of individuals 
on public questions, they affect the safety of the whole system. 
"When these motives run deep and wide, and come in serious 
conflict with higher, purer, and more patriotic purposes, they 
greatly endanger that system ; and all will admit that, if they 
become general and overwhelming, so that all public princi- 
ple is lost sight of, and every election becomes a mere scram- 
ble for office, the system inevitably must fall. Every wise 
man, in and out of government, will endeavour, therefore, to 
promote the ascendency of public virtue and public principle, 
and to restrain, as far as practicable, in the actual operation of 
our institutions, the influence of selfish and private interests. 

I concur with those who think that, looking to the present, 
and looking also to the future, and regarding all the probabil- 
ities that await us in reference to the character and qualities of 
those who may fill the executive chair, it is important to the 
stability of government and the welfare of the people, that 
there should be a check to the progress of official influence and 
patronage. The unlimited power to grant office, and to take it 
away, gives a command over the hopes and fears of a vast mul- 
titude of men. It is generally true, that he who controls an- 
other man's means of living controls his will. Where there are 
favours to be granted, there are usually enough to solicit for 
them ; and when favours once granted may be withdrawn at 

4 See the piece headed "The Spoils to the Victors," page 402. 



PHILA2*THK0PIC LOVE OP POWEE. 527 

pleasure, there is ordinarily little security for personal inde- 
pendence of character. The power of giving office thus affects 
the fears of all who are in, and the hopes of all who are out. 
Those who are out endeavour to distinguish themselves by act- 
ive political friendship, by warm personal devotion, by clam- 
orous support of men in whose hands is the power of reward ; 
while those who are in ordinarily take care that others shall not 
surpass them in such qualities or such conduct as is most likely 
to secure favour. They resolve not to be outdone in any of the 
works of partisanship. The consequence of all this is obvious. 
A competition ensues, not of patriotic labours ; not of rough 
and severe toils for the public good ; not of manliness, inde- 
pendence, and public spirit ; but of complaisance, of indiscrim- 
inate support of executive measures, of pliant subserviency 
and gross adulation. All throng and rush together to the altar 
of man-worship ; and there they offer sacrifices, and pour out 
libations, till the thick fumes of their incense turn their own 
heads, and turn, also, the head of him who is the object of their 
idolatrj 7 ". 

The existence of parties in popular governments is not to be 
avoided ; and if they are formed on constitutional questions, or 
in regard to great measures of public policy, and do not run to 
excessive length, it may be admitted that, on the whole, they 
do no great harm. But the patronage of office, the power of 
bestowing place and emoluments, creates parties, not upon any 
principle or any measure, but upon the single ground of per- 
sonal interest. Under the direct influence of this motive, they 
form round a leader, and they go for "the spoils of victory." 
And if the party chieftain becomes the national chieftain, he is 
still but too apt to consider all who have opposed him as ene- 
mies to be punished, and all who have supported him as friends 
to be rewarded. Blind devotion to party, and to the head of a 
party, thus takes the place of the sentiments of generous pat- 
riotism and a high and exalted sense of public duty. — Speech on 
the Appointing and Bemoving Power, Feb., 1835. 



PHILANTHROPIC LOVE OF POWER. 

I believe the power of the executive has increased, is in- 
creasing, and ought now to be brought back within its ancient 
constitutional limits. 5 I have nothing to do with the motives 

5 This is a paraphrase of a famous resolution moved by Mr. Dunning in the 
House of Commons. See page 136, note 3. 



528 WEBSTER. 

that have led to those acts which I believe to have transcended 
the boundaries of the Constitution. Good motives may always 
be assumed, as bad motives may always be imputed. Good in- 
tentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of power ; 
but they cannot justify it, even if we were sure that they ex- 
isted. It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was 
made, to guard the people against the clangers of good inten- 
tions, real or pretended. When bad intentions are boldly 
avowed, the people will promptly take care of themselves. On 
the other hand, they will always be asked why they should re- 
sist or question that exercise of power which is so fair in its 
object, so plausible and patriotic in appearance, and which has 
the public good alone confessedly in view. Human beings, we 
may be assured, will generally exercise power when they can 
get it ; and they will exercise it most undoubtedly, in popular 
governments, under pretences of public safety or high public 
interest. It may be very possible that good intentions do really 
sometimes exist when constitutional restraints are disregarded. 
There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power use- 
fully ; but they mean to exercise it. They mean to govern 
well ; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind mas- 
ters ; but they mean to be masters. They think there need be 
but little restraint upon themselves. Their notion of the pub- 
lic interest is apt to be quite closely connected with their own 
exercise of authority. They may not, indeed, always under- 
stand their own motives. The love of power may sink too deep 
in their own hearts even for their own scrutiny, and may pass 
with themselves for mere patriotism and benevolence. 

A character has been drawn of a very eminent citizen of 
Massachusetts, of the last age, which, though I think it does 
not entirely belong to him, yet very well describes a certain 
class of public men. It was said of this distinguished son of 
Massachusetts, that in matters of politics and government he 
cherished the most kind and benevolent feelings towards the 
whole Earth. He earnestly desired to see all nations well 
governed : and to bring about this happy result, he wished that 
the United States might govern all the rest of the world ; that 
Massachusetts might govern the United States ; that Boston 
might govern Massachusetts ; and as for himself, his own hum- 
ble ambition would be satisfied by governing the little town of 
Boston.— Speech at Mblo's Saloon, New York, March 15, 1837. 






THE SPIRIT OF DISUNION". 529 



THE SPIRIT OF DISUNION. 6 

The spirit of union is particularly liable to temptation and 
seduction in moments of peace and prosperity. In war, this 
spirit is strengthened by a sense of common danger, and by a 
thousand recollections of ancient efforts and ancient glory in a 
common cause. But in the calms of a long peace, and in the 
absence of all apparent causes of alarm, things near gain the 
ascendency over things remote. Local interests and feelings 
overshadow national sentiments. Our attention, our regard, 
and our attachment are every moment solicited to what touches 
us closest, and we feel less and less the attraction of a distant 
orb. Such tendencies we are bound by true patriotism and by 
our love of union to resist. This is our duty ; and the moment, 
in my judgment, has arrived, when that duty should be per- 
formed. We hear, every day, sentiments and arguments which 
would become a meeting of envoys, employed by separate gov- 
ernments, more than they become the common legislature of a 
united country. Constant appeals are made to local interests, 
to geographical distinctions, and to the policy and pride of par- 
ticular States. It would sometimes appear as if it were a set- 
tled purpose to convince the people that our Union is nothing 

6 The following piece is the conclusion of Webster's second speech on the 
Sub-Treasury, delivered March 12, 1838. Calhoun, after a concurrence of several 
years with Webster in opposing the financial policy of the government, had un- 
expectedly espoused the Sub-Treasury scheme, partly as a means of uniting the 
South against the North. In the course of the speech aforesaid, Webster pursues 
Calhoun in a strain of rather caustic though good-humoured satire. This drew 
from Calhoun a most elaborate and searching review of Webster's political 
course. I have elsewhere remarked that Webster had an intense aversion to 
political metaphysics. Herein he differed in toto from Calhoun, who, it seems 
to me, was rather a great political metaphysician than a statesman, in the right 
sense of the term. I must add that, all through his Congressional life, Webster 
stood on terms of cordial friendliness with Calhoun. The two men had indeed 
a profound respect for each other. Webster admired the genius of Calhoun, and 
honoured him for his high personal worth. Though they dealt many a hard 
blow upon each other in the Senate, each seemed always the more drawn to the 
other for the perfect manliness and dignity with which the "hard pounding" 
was done. But Webster never would go along at all with the noble Southerner 
in those speculative intricacies where men " find no end, in wandering mazes 
lost." In reply to Calhoun's searching review aforesaid, Webster made another 
speech, on the 22d of March. In this speech, after referring to certain questions 
wherein Caihoun had quite shifted off from his original ground, he has the fol- 
lowing : "The honourable member now takes these questions with him into the 
upper heights of metaphysics, into the region of those refinements and subtile 
arguments which he rejected with so much decision in 1817. He quits his old 
ground of common sense, experience, and the general understanding of the 
country, for a flight among theories and ethereal abstractions."— See Sketch of 
Webster's Life, page 332. 



530 WEBSTER. 

but a jumble of different and discordant interests, which must, 
ere long, be all resolved into their original state of separate ex- 
istence ; as if, therefore, it was of no great value while it should 
last, and was not likely to last long. The process of disin- 
tegration begins by urging as a fact the existence of different 
interests. 

Sir, is not the end to which all this leads us obvious ? Who 
does not see that, if convictions of this kind take possession of 
the public mind, our Union can hereafter be nothing, while it 
remains, but a connection without harmony ; a bond without 
affection ; a theatre for the angry contests of local feelings, 
local objects, and local jealousies ? Even while it continues to 
exist in name, it may by these means become nothing but the 
mere form of a united government. My children, and the chil- 
dren of those who sit around me, may meet, perhaps, in this 
chamber, in the next generation ; but if tendencies now but too 
obvious be not checked, they will meet as strangers and aliens. 
They will feel no sense of common interest or common coun- 
try ; they will cherish no common object of patriotic love. If 
the same Saxon language shall fall from their lips, it may be 
the chief proof that they belong to the same nation. Its vital 
principle exhausted and gone, its power of doing good termi- 
nated, the Union itself, become productive only of strife and 
contention, must ultimately fall, dishonoured, and unlamented. 

The honourable member from South Carolina himself habit- 
ually indulges in charges of usurpation and oppression against 
the government of his country. He daily denounces its impor- 
tant measures, in the language in which our Revolutionary 
fathers spoke of the oppressions of the mother country. Not 
merely against executive usurpation, either real or supposed, 
does he utter these sentiments ; but against laws of Congress, 
laws passed by large majorities, laws sanctioned for a course of 
years by the people. These laws he proclaims, every hour, to 
be but a series of acts of oppression. He speaks of them as if 
it were an admitted fact that such is their true character. This 
is the language he utters, these are the sentiments he ex- 
presses, to the rising generation around him. Are they senti- 
ments and language which are likely to inspire our children 
with the love of union, to enlarge their patriotism, or to teach 
them, and to make them feel, that their destiny has made them 
common citizens of one great and glorious republic ? A princi- 
pal object in his late political movements, the gentleman him- 
self tells us, was to unite the entire South ; and against whom, or 
against what, does he wish to unite the entire South? Is not 
this the very essence of local feeling and local regard ? Is it 
not the acknowledgment of a wish and object to create political 






THE SPIKIT OF DISUNION. 531 

strength by uniting political opinions geographically? While 
the gentleman thus wishes to unite the entire South, I pray to 
know, Sir, if he expects me to turn toward the polar star, and, 
acting on the same principle, to utter the cry of Bally ! to the 
whole North? Heaven forbid! To the day of my death, 
neither he nor others shall hear such a cry from me. 

Finally, the honourable member declares that he shall now 
march off under the banner of State rights. March off from 
whom? March off from what? We have been contending for 
great principles. We have been struggling to maintain the lib- 
erty and to restore the prosperity of the country ; we have 
made these struggles here, in the national councils, with the 
old flag, the true American flag, — the Eagle, and the Stars and 
Stripes, — waving over the chamber in which we sit. He tells 
us, however, that he marches off under the State-rights banner ! 

Let him go. I remain. I am where I ever have been, and 
ever mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the gen- 
eral Constitution, a platform broad enough and firm enough to 
uphold every interest of the whole country, I shall still be 
found. Intrusted with some part in the administration of that 
Constitution, I intend to act in its spirit, and in the spirit of 
those who framed it. Yes, Sir, I would act as if our fathers, 
who formed it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking 
on me ; as if I could see their venerable forms bending down 
to behold us from the abodes above. I would act, too, as if the 
eye of posterity were gazing on me. 

Standing thus, as in the full gaze of our ancestors and our 
posterity, having received this inheritance from the former, to 
be transmitted to the latter, and feeling that, if I am born for 
any good in my day and generation, it is for the good of the 
whole country, no local policy or local feeling, no temporary 
impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold on the Constitu- 
tion of the Union. I move off under no banner not known to 
the whole American people, and to their Constitution and laws. 
No, Sir; these walls, these columns "shall fly from their firm 
base as soon as I." 

I came into public life, Sir, in the service of the United 
States. On that broad altar my earliest and all my public vows 
have been made. I propose to serve no other master. So far 
as depends on any agency of mine, they shall continue united 
States ; united in interest and in affection ; united in every 
thing in regard to which the Constitution has decreed their 
union ; united in war, for the common defence, the common re- 
nown, and the common glory; and united, compacted, knit 
firmly together in peace, for the common prosperity and happi- 
ness of ourselves and our children. 



532 WEBSTER. 



IMPORTANCE OF THE NAYY. 

The gentleman says, and says truly, that at the commence- 
ment of the war the navy was unpopular. It was unpopular 
with his friends, who then controlled the politics of the coun- 
try. 33ut he says he differed with his friends: in this respect he 
resisted party influence and party connection, and was the 
friend and advocate of the navy. Sir, I commend him for it. 
He showed his wisdom. That gallant little navy soon fought 
itself into favour, and no man who had placed reliance on it 
was disappointed. 

I do not know when my opinion of the importance of a naval 
force to the United States had its origin. I can give no date to 
my present sentiments on this subject, because I never enter- 
tained different sentiments. I remember, Sir, that immediately 
after coming into my profession, at a period when the navy was 
most unpopular, when it was called by all sorts of hard names 
and designated by many coarse epithets, on one of those occa- 
sions on which young men address their neighbours, I ventured 
to put forth a boy's hand in defence of the navy. I insisted on 
its importance, its adaptation to our circumstances and to our 
national character, and its indispensable necessity, if we in- 
tended to maintain and extend our commerce. These opinions 
and sentiments I brought into Congress ; and the first time in 
which I presumed to speak on the topics of the day, I attempted 
to urge on the House a greater attention to the naval service. 
There were divers modes of prosecuting the war. On these 
modes, or on the degree of attention and expense which should 
be bestowed on each, different men held different opinions. I 
confess I looked with most hope to the results of naval war- 
fare, and therefore I invoked government to invigorate and 
strengthen that arm of the national defence. I invoked it to 
seek its enemy upon the seas, to go where every auspicious in- 
dication pointed, and where the whole heart and soul of the 
country would go with it. 

Sir, we were at war with the greatest maritime power on 
Earth. England had gained an ascendency on the seas over all 
the combined powers of Europe. She had been at war twenty 
years. She had tried her fortunes on the Continent, but gener- 
ally with no success. At one time the whole Continent had 
been closed against her. A long line of armed exterior, an un- 
broken hostile array frowned upon her from the Gulf of Arch- 
angel, round the promontory of Spain and Portugal, to the 
extreme point of Italy. There was not a port which an English 
ship could enter. Everywhere on the land the genius of her 



THE LOG CABIN. 533 

' great enemy had triumphed. He had defeated armies, crushed 
coalitions, and overturned thrones ; but, like the fabled giant, 
he was unconquerable only while he touched the land. On the 
ocean he was powerless. That field of fame was his adver- 
sary's, and her meteor flag was streaming in triumph over its 
whole extent. 

To her maritime ascendency England owed every thing, and 
we were now at war with her. One of the most charming of 
her poets had said of her, "Her march is on the mountain 
wave, her home is on the deep." Now, Sir, since we were at 
war with her, I was for intercepting this march ; I was for call- 
ing upon her, and paying our respects to her, at home ; I was 
for giving her to know that we, too, had a right of way over the 
seas, and that our marine officers and our sailors were not en- 
tire strangers on the bosom of the deep. I was for doing some- 
thing more with our navy than keeping it on. our own shores, 
for the protection of our coasts and harbours : I was for giving 
play to its gallant and burning spirit ; for allowing it to go forth 
upon the seas, and to encounter, on an open and equal field, 
whatever the proudest or the bravest of the enemy could bring 
against it. I knew the character of its officers and the spirit of 
its seamen ; and I knew that, in their hands, though the flag of 
the country might go down to the bottom, yet, while defended 
by them, it could never be dishonoured or disgraced. 

Since she was our enemy, and a most powerful enemy, I was 
for touching her, if we could, in the very apple of her eye ; for 
reaching the highest feather in her cap ; for clutching at the 
very brightest jewel in her crown. There seemed to me to be a 
peculiar propriety in all this, as the war was undertaken for the 
redress of maritime injuries alone. It was a war declared for 
free trade and sailors' rights. The ocean, therefore, was the 
proper theatre for deciding this controversy with our enemy ; 
and on that theatre it was my ardent wish that our own power 
should be concentrated to the utmost.— Speech in Reply to Cal- 
houn, March 22d, 1838. 



THE LOG CABIN. 



It is the cry and effort of the times to stimulate those who 
are called poor against those who are called rich ; and yet, 
among those who urge this cry, and seek to profit byit, there is 
betrayed sometimes an occasional sneer at whatever savours of 
humble life. Witness the reproach against a candidate now be- 



534 WEBSTER. 

fore the people for their highest honours, that a log cabin, with 
plenty of hard cider, is good enough for him ! 

It appears to some persons that a great deal too much use is 
made of the symbol of the log cabin.'' But it is to be remem- 
bered that this matter of the log cabin originated, not with the 
friends of the Whig candidate, but with his enemies. Soon 
after his nomination at Harrisburg, a writer in one of the lead- 
ing administration papers spoke of his "log cabin," and his use 
of "hard cider," by way of sneer and reproach. As might 
have been expected, (for pretenders are apt to be thrown off 
their guard,) this taunt at humble life proceeded from the 
party which claims a monopoly of the purest democracy. The 
whole party appeared to enjoy it, or at least they countenanced 
it by silent acquiescence ; for I do not know that, to this day, 
any eminent individual or any leading newspaper attached to 
the administration has rebuked this scornful jeering at the 
supposed humble condition -or circumstances in life, past or 
present, of a worthy man and a war-worn soldier. But it 
touched a tender point in the public feeling. It naturally 
roused indignation. What was intended as reproach was im- 
mediately seized on as merit. "Be it so ! Be it so !" was the 
instant burst of the public voice. "Let him be the log-cabin 
candidate. What you say in scorn, we will shout with all our 
lungs. From this day forward, we have our cry of rally ; and 
we shall see whether he who has dwelt in one of the rude 
abodes of the West may not become the best house in the 
country." 

All this is natural, and springs from sources of just feeling. 
Other things, Gentlemen, have had a similar origin. We all 
know that the term Wliig was bestowed in derision, two hundred 
years ago, on those who were thought too fond of liberty ; and 
our national air of Yankee Doodle was composed by British offi- 
cers, in ridicule of the American troops. Yet, ere long, the 
last of the British armies laid down its arms at Yorktown, 
while this same air was playing in the ears of officers and men. 
Gentlemen, it is only shallow-minded pretenders who either 
make distinguished origin matter of personal merit, or obscure 
origin matter of personal reproach. Taunt and scoffing at the 
humble condition of early life affect nobody, in this country, 

7 The Presidential canvass of 1840 was carried on by the Whigs with prodig- 
ious enthusiasm ; and miniature log cabins were every where made use of to 
feed that enthusiasm, and as the most effective appeals to popular intelligence. 
I was then in the last year of my college course ; and the " college boys " made 
many a night vocal with the electioneering song of " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 
at tho same time drinking whatever " hard cider" they could get. It was in the 
battle of Tippecanoe'that General Harrison won his chief military laurels. 



SPEAKING FOR THE UNION. 535 

but those who are foolish enough to indulge in them ; and they 
are generally sufficiently punished by public rebuke. A man 
who. is not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early 
condition. 

Gentlemen, it did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin ; 
but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, 
raised amid the snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so 
early that, when the smoke rose from its rude chimney, and 
curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a 
white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the 
rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an an- 
nual visit. I carry my children to it, to teach them the hard- 
ships endured by the generations which have gone before 
them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred 
ties, the early affections and the touching narratives and inci- 
dents, which mingle with all I know of this primitive family 
abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are 
now among the living ; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if I 
ever fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared it, and 
defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished 
all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and, through the fire 
and blood of a seven years' revolutionary war, shrunk from no 
danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country, and to raise 
his children to a condition better than his own, may my name 
and the name of my posterity be blotted for ever from the 
memory of mankind ! — Speech at Saratoga, August 19, 1840. 



SPEAKING FOR THE UNION. 

Mr. President: I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachu- 
setts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a 
member of the Senate of the United States. It is fortunate 
that there is a Senate of the United States ; a body not yet 
moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own dig- 
nity and its own high responsibilities ; and a body to which the 
country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, 
and healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the 
midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very consid- 
erable dangers to our institutions and government. The im- 
prisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the 
stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, 
to toss its billows to the skies, and to disclose its profoundest 
depths. I do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as 



530 WEBSTER. 






holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat with the polit- 
ical elements ; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean to per- 
form it with fidelity, not without a sense of existing dangers, 
but not without hope. I have a part to act, not for my own 
security or safety ; for I am looking out for no fragment upon 
which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be ; 
but for the good of the whole, and the preservation of all ; and 
there is that which will keep me to my duty during this strug- 
gle, whether the Sun and the stars shall appear, or shall not 
appear for many days. I speak to-day for the preservation of 
the Union. " Hear me for my cause." I speak to-day, out of a 
solicitous and anxious heart, for the restoration to the country 
of that quiet and that harmony which make the blessings of this 
Union so rich, and so dear to us all. These are the topics that I 
propose to myself to discuss ; these are the motives, and the 
sole motives, that influence me in the wish to communicate my 
opinions to the Senate and the country ; and if I can do any- 
thing, however little, for the promotion of these ends, I shall 
have accomplished all that I expect.-— Speech of March 7, 1850. 



OBEDIENCE TO INSTRUCTIONS. 8 

It has become, in my opinion, quite too common, — and if the 
legislatures of the States do not like that opinion, they have a 
great deal more power to put it down than I have to uphold it, 
it has become, in my opinion, quite too common a practice for 
the State legislatures to present resolutions here on all subjects, 
and to instruct us on all subjects. There is no public man that 
requires instruction more than I do, or who requires information 
more than I do, or desires it more heartily ; but I do not like to 
have it in too imperative a shape. I took notice, with pleasure, 
of some remarks made upon this subject, the other day, in the 
Senate of Massachusetts, by a young man of talent and charac- 
ter, of whom the best hopes may be entertained. I mean Mr. 

8 The doctrine that members of Congress are bound to follow implicitly the 
instructions of their particular constituents was for many years pushed so hard, 
that it threatened to overthrow all manly firmness and independence of judg- 
ment in our national legislators. In several cases, grave members of Congress 
became so weak-kneed under this pressure as to dishonour themselves by argu- 
ing on one side of a given question, and then voting on the other. The doctrine 
is indeed highly flattering to popular folly, for which cause political demagogues 
favour it, of course. Perhaps the best utterance ever made on the subject is 
Burke's, which will be found on page 113 of this volume. But this of Webster's 
is not unworthy of a place beside that. 



PEACEABLE SECESSION. 537 

Hillard. He told the Senate of Massachusetts that he would 
vote for no instructions whatever to be forwarded to members 
of Congress, nor for any resolutions to be offered expressive of 
the sense of Massachusetts as to what her members of Congress 
ought to do. He said that he saw no propriety in one set of 
public servants giving instructions and reading lectures to an- 
other set of public servants. To his own master each of them 
must stand or fall, and that master is his constituents. I wish 
these sentiments could become more common. I have never 
entered into the question, and never shall, as to the binding 
force of instructions. I will, however, simply say this : If there 
be any matter pending in this body, while I am a member of it, 
in which Massachusetts has an interest of her own not adverse 
to the general interests of the country, I shall pursue her in- 
structions with gladness of heart, and with all the efficiency 
which I can bring to the occasion. But if the question be one 
which affects her interest, and at the same time equally affects 
the interests of all the other States, I shall no more regard her 
particular wishes or instructions, than I should regard the wishes 
of a man who might appoint me an arbitrator or referee, to 
decide some question of important private right between him 
and his neighbour, and then instruct me to decide in his favour. 
If ever there was a government upon Earth it is this govern- 
ment, if ever there were a body upon Earth it is this body, which 
should consider itself as composed by the agreement of all, 
each member appointed by some, but organized by the general 
consent of all, sitting here, under the solemn obligations of oath 
and conscience, to do that which they think to be best for the 
good of the whole.— Speech of March 7, 1850. 



PEACEABLE SECESSION. 

Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from 
every member on this floor declarations of opinion that this 
Union could never be dissolved, than the declaration of opinion 
by anybody, that, in any case, under the pressure of any cir- 
cumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with dis- 
tress and anguish the word secession, especially when it falls 
from the lips of those who are patriotic, and known to the 
country, and known all over the world, for their political ser- 
vices. Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine 
are never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment 
of this vast country without convulsion 1 The breaking up of the 



538 WEBSTER. 

fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is 
so foolish — I beg everybody's pardon — as to expect to see any 
such thing? Sir, he who sees these States, now revolving in 
harmony around a common centre, and expects to see them quit 
their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next 
hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and 
jostle against each other in the realms of space, without caus- 
ing the wreck of the Universe. There can be no such thing as 
a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossi- 
bility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering 
this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by se- 
cession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence 
of a vernal Sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, 
Sir! No, Sir! I will not state what might produce the disrup- 
tion of the Union; but I see, as plainly as I see the Sun in 
heaven, what that disruption itself must produce: I see that it 
must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its 
twofold character. 

Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the 
members of this great republic to separate ! Where is the flag 
of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? 
or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground ? Why, 
Sir, our ancestors, our fathers and our grandfathers, those of 
them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives, 
would rebuke and reproach us ; and our children and our grand- 
children would cry shame upon us, if we of this generation 
should dishonour these ensigns of the power of the government 
and the harmony of that Union which is every day felt among 
us with so much joy and gratitude. I know the idea has been 
entertained, that, after the dissolution of this Union, a South- 
ern Confederacy might be formed. I am sorry that it has ever 
been thought of, talked of, or dreamed of, in the wildest flights 
of human imagination. But the idea, so far as it exists, must 
be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side, and 
the free States to the other. I may express myself too strongly, 
perhaps ; but there are impossibilities in the natural as well as 
in the political world ; and I hold the idea of a separation of 
these States, those that are free to form one government, and 
those that are slave-holding to form another, as such an im- 
possibility. 

Sir, nobody can look over the face of this country at the pres- 
ent moment, nobody can see where its population is the most 
dense and growing, without being ready to admit, and com- 
pelled to admit, that ere long the strength of America will be 
in the Valley of the Mississippi. Well, now, I beg to inquire 
what the wildest enthusiast has to say on the possibility of 



PEACEABLE SECESSION. 539 

cutting that river in two, and leaving free States at the source 
and on its branches, and slave States down near its mouth, 
each forming a separate government? Pray, Sir, let me say to 
the people of this country, that these things are worthy of 
their pondering and of their consideration. Here are five mill- 
ions of freemen in the free States north of the river Ohio. Can 
anybody suppose that this population can be severed, by a line 
that divides them from the territory of a foreign and an alien 
government, down somewhere, the Lord knows where, upon 
the lower banks of the Mississippi ? Sir, I am ashamed to pur- 
sue this line of remark: I dislike it ; I have an utter disgust for 
it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, 
pestilence, and famine, than hear gentlemen talk of secession. 
To break up this great government ! to astonish Europe with 
such an act of folly as Europe for two centuries has never 
beheld in any government or any people! 

Sir, I hear there is a convention to be held at Nashville. I am 
bound to believe that, if worthy gentlemen meet at Nashville 
in convention, their object will be to adopt conciliatory coun- 
sels ; to advise the South to forbearance and moderation, and to 
advise the North to forbearance and moderation ; and to incul- 
cate principles of brotherly love and affection, and attachment 
to the Constitution of the country as it now is. I believe, if the 
convention meet at all, it will be for this purpose : for, certainly, 
if they meet for any purpose hostile to the Union, they have 
been singularly inappropriate in their selection of a place. I 
remember that, when the treaty of Amiens was concluded be- 
tween Erance and England, a sturdy Englishman and a distin- 
guished orator, who regarded the conditions of the peace as 
ignominious to England, said in the House of Commons that, if 
King William could know the terms of that treaty, he would 
turn in his coffin ! Let me commend this saying of Mr. Wind- 
ham, in all its emphasis and all its force, to any persons who 
shall meet at Nashville for the purpose of concerting measures 
for the overthrow of this Union over the bones of Andrew 
Jackson ! 

And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility 
or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in those caverns of 
darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that 
is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day ; let 
us enjoy the fresh air of Liberty and Union ; let us cherish 
those hopes which belong to us ; let us devote ourselves to those 
great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action ; 
let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance 
of the duties that devolve upon us ; let our comprehension be 
as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high 



540 WEBSTER. 

as its certain destiny ; let us not be pigmies in a case that calls 
for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men 
higher trusts than now devolve upon us, for the preservation of 
this Constitution and the harmony and peace of all who are des- 
tined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the 
strongest and brightest links in that golden chain which is des- 
tined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the States to 
this Constitution for ages to come. No monarchical throne 
presses these States together, no iron chain of military power 
encircles them ; they live and stand under a government popu- 
lar in its form, representative in its character, founded upon 
principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last 
for ever. In all its history it has been beneficent ; it has trod- 
den down no man's liberty ; it has crushed no State. Its daily 
respiration is liberty and patriotism ; its yet youthful veins are 
full of enterprise, courage, and honourable love of glory and 
renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, 
become vastly larger. This republic now extends, with a vast 
breadth, across the whole continent. The two great seas of the 
world wash the one and the other shore.— Speech of March 7, 
1850. 



STANDING UPON THE CONSTITUTION. 

The State in whose representation I bear a part is a Union 
State, thoroughly and emphatically : she is attached to the 
Union and the Constitution by indissoluble ties : she connects 
all her own history from colonial times, her struggle for inde- 
pendence, her efforts for the establishment of this government, 
and all the benefits and blessings which she has enjoyed under 
it, in one great attractive whole, to which her affections are 
constantly and powerfully drawn. All these make up a history 
in which she has taken a part, and the whole of which she en- 
joys as a most precious inheritance. She is a State for the 
Union ; she will be for the Union. It is the law of her destiny ; 
it is the law of her situation ; it is a law imposed upon her by 
the recollections of the past, and by every interest for the pres- 
ent and every hope for the future. 

Mr. President, it has always seemed to me to be a grateful 
reflection that, however short and transient may be the lives of 
individuals, States may be permanent. The great corporations 
that embrace the government of mankind, protect their liber- 
ties, and secure their happiness, may have something of perpe- 
tuity, and, as I might say, of earthly immortality. For my part, 



STANDING UPON THE CONSTITUTION. 541, 

Sir, I gratify myself by contemplating what in the future will 
be the condition of that generous State which has done me the 
honour to keep me in the counsels of the country for so many 
years. I see nothing about her in prospect less than that which 
encircles her now. I feel that, when I and all those that now 
hear me shall have gone to our last home, and afterwards, 
when mould may have gathered upon our memories, as it will 
have done upon our tombs, that State, so early to take her part 
in the great contest of the Eevolution, will stand, as she has 
stood and now stands, like that column which, near her Capi- 
tol, perpetuates the memory of the first great battle of the 
Eevolution, firm, erect, and immovable. I believe that, if com- 
motion shall shake the country, there will be one rock for ever, 
as solid as the granite of her hills, for the Union to repose 
upon. I believe that, if disasters arise, bringing clouds which 
shall obscure the ensign now over her and over us, there will 
be one star that will but burn the brighter amid the darkness of 
that night ; and I believe that, if in the remotest ages (I trust 
they will be infinitely remote) an occasion shall occur when 
the sternest duties of patriotism are demanded and to be per- 
formed, Massachusetts will imitate her own example ; and that, 
as at the breaking-out of the Eevolution she was the first to 
offer the outpouring of her blood and her treasure in the strug- 
gle for liberty, so she will be hereafter ready, when the emer- 
gency arises, to repeat and renew that offer, with a thousand 
times as many warm hearts, and a thousand times as many 
strong hands. 

And now, Mr. President, to return at last to the principal and 
important question before us. What are we to do ? How are 
we to bring this emergent and pressing question to an issue and 
an end ? Here have we been seven and a half months, disput- 
ing about points which, in my judgment, are of no practical 
importance to one or the other part of the country. Are we to 
dwell for ever upon a single topic, a single idea ? Are we to for- 
get all the purposes for which governments are instituted, and 
continue everlastingly to dispute about that which is of no 
essential consequence ? I think, Sir, the country calls upon us 
loudly and imperatively to settle this question. I think that 
the whole world is looking to see whether this great popular 
government can get through such a crisis. We are the ob- 
served of all observers. We have stood through many trials. 
Can we stand through this, which takes so much the character 
of a sectional controversy? There is no inquiring man in all 
Europe who does not ask himself that question every day, when 
he reads the intelligence of the morning. Can this country, 
with one set of interests at the South, and another set of inter- 



542 WEBSTER. 

ests at the North, and these interests supposed, but falsely 
supposed, to be at variance, — can this people see, what is so 
evident to all the world besides, that the Union is their main 
hope and greatest benefit, and that their interests in every part 
are entirely compatible ? Can they see, and will they feel, that 
their prosperity, their respectability among the nations of the 
Earth, and their happiness at home depend upon the mainten- 
ance of their Union and their Constitution ? 

I agree that local divisions are apt to warp the understand- 
ings of men, and to excite a belligerent feeling between section 
and section. It is natural, in times of irritation, for one part of 
the country to say, "If you do that, I will do this," and so get 
up a feeling of hostility and defiance. Then comes belligerent 
legislation, and then an appeal to arms. The question is, 
whether we have the true patriotism, the Americanism, neces- 
sary to carry us through such a trial. For myself, I propose* 
Sir, to abide by the principles and the purposes which I have 
avowed. I shall stand by the Union, and by all who stand by 
it. I shall do justice to the whole country, according to the best 
of my ability, in all I say, and act for the good of the whole 
country in all I do. I mean to stand upon the Constitution. I 
need no other platform. I shall know but one country. The 
ends I aim at shall be my country's, my God's, and Truth's. I 
was born an American ; I will live an American ; I shall die an 
American ; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon 
me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this 
with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are 
personal consequences ? What is the individual man, with all 
the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the 
good or evil which may befall a great country in a crisis like 
this, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that 
country's fate ? Let the consequences be what they may, I am 
careless. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too 
soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defence of the liberties and 
Constitution of his country. 9 

9 The foregoing are, I believe, the last words spoken by Daniel Webster in 
the national Senate; at least they are the last that appear in his published 
works. They are the conclusion of a speech delivered July 17, 1850, on what 
was called " The Compromise Bill." And they seem to me to form no unfitting 
close to his great career as a legislator, the noblest and wisest Senator that has 
ever illustrated and adorned the American Senate. See Sketch of his Life, page 
333. 



AK APPEAL FOR THE UKIOK. 543 



AX APPEAL FOR THE UNION. 1 

Fellow-citizens : By the Act of Congress of the 30th of 
September, 1850, provision was made for the extension of the 
Capitol, according to such plan as might be approved by the 
President of the United States, and for the necessary sums to 
be expended, under his direction, by such architect as he might 
appoint. This measure was imperatively demanded, for the 
use of the legislative and judiciary departments, the public 
libraries, the occasional accommodation of the chief magistrate, 
and for other objects. No Act of Congress incurring a large 
expenditure has received more general approbation from the 
people. The President has proceeded to execute this law. He 
has approved a plan ; he has appointed an architect ; and all 
things are now ready for the commencement of the work. 

The anniversary of national independence appeared to afford 
an auspicious occasion for laying the foundation-stone of the 
additional building. That ceremony has now been performed 
by the President himself in the presence and view of this mul- 
titude. He has thought that the day and the occasion made a 
united and imperative call for some short address to the people 
here assembled ; and it is at his request that I have appeared 
before you to perform that part of the duty which was deemed 
incumbent on us. 

Fellow-citizens, fifty-eight years ago Washington stood on 
this spot to execute a duty like that which has now been per- 
formed. He then laid the corner-stone of the original Capitol. 
He was at the head of the government, at that time weak in re- 
sources, burdened with debt, just struggling into political exist- 
ence and respectability, and agitated by the heaving waves 
which were overturning European thrones. But even then, in 
many respects, the government was strong. It was strong in 
Washington's own great character ; it was strong in the wisdom 
and patriotism of other eminent public men, his political associ- 
ates and fellow-labourers ; and it was strong in the affections of 
the people. 

Since that time astonishing changes have been wrought in the 
condition and prospects of the American people ; and a degree 
of progress witnessed with which the world can furnish no par- 
allel. As we review the course of that progress, wonder and 
amazement arrest our attention at every step. 

1 On the 4th of July, 1851, President Fillmore laid, with fitting ceremonies, 
the Corner-stone of the Addition to the Capitol. Under the above heading, I 
"give, with some omissions, the latter half of the very eloquent address which 
-Webster, then Secretary of State, delivered on that occasion. 



544 WEBSTEK. 

And now, fellow-citizens, I ask you, and I would ask every 
man, whether the government which has" been over us has 
proved itself an affliction and a curse to the country, or any 
part of it ? 

Ye men of the South, of all the original Southern States, what 
say you to all this ? Are you, or any of you, ashamed of this 
great work of your fathers ? Your fathers were not they who 
stoned the prophets and killed them. They were among the 
prophets ; they were of the prophets ; they were themselves 
the prophets. 

Ye men of Virginia, what do you say to all this ? Ye men of 
the Potomac, dwelling along the shore of that river on which 
Washington lived and died, and where his remains now rest, 
— ye, so many of whom may see the domes of the Capitol from 
your own homes, what say ye ? 

Ye men of James River and the Bay, places consecrated by 
the early settlement of your Commonwealth, what do you say? 
Do you desire, from the soil of your State, or as you travel to 
the North, to see these halls vacated, their beauty and orna- 
ments destroyed, and their national usefulness gone forever? 

Ye men beyond the Blue Ridge, many thousands of whom 
are nearer to this Capitol than to the seat of government of 
your own State, what do you think of breaking this great associ- 
ation into fragments of States and of people ? I know that some 
of you, and I believe that you all, would be almost as much 
shocked at the announcement of such a catastrophe, as if you 
were to be informed that the Blue Ridge itself would soon 
totter from its base. And ye men of Western Virginia, who 
occupy the great slope from the top of the Alleghanies to Ohio 
and Kentucky, what benefit do you propose to yourselves from 
disunion? If you "secede," what do you "secede" from, and 
what do you "accede " to ? Do you look for the current of the 
Ohio to change, and to bring you and your commerce to the 
tide-waters of the Eastern rivers ? What man in his senses can 
suppose that you would remain part and parcel of Virginia a 
month after Virginia should have ceased to be part and parcel 
of the United States ? 

The secession of Virginia ! The secession of Virginia, whether 
alone or in company, is most improbable, the greatest of all im- 
probabilities. Virginia, to her everlasting honour, acted a great 
part in framing and establishing the present Constitution. She 
has had her reward and her distinction. Seven of her noble 
sons have each filled the Presidency, and enjoyed the highest 
honours of the country. Dolorous complaints come up to us 
from the South, that Virginia will not head the march of seces- 
sion, and lead the other Southern States out of the Union. This, 



Atf APPEAL FOR THE UHIOtf. 545 

if it should happen, would be something of a marvel, certainly, 
considering how much pains Virginia took to lead these same 
States into the Union, and considering, too, that she has par- 
taken as largely of its benefits and its government as any other 
State. 

And ye men of the other Southern States, members of the 
Old Thirteen ; yes, members of the Old Thirteen ;— that always 
touches my regard and my sympathies ; — North Carolina, Geor- 
gia, South Carolina! what page in your history, or in the his- 
tory of any one of you, is brighter than those which have been 
recorded since the Union was formed ? or through what period 
has your prosperity been greater, or your peace and happiness 
better secured ? What names even has South Carolina, now so 
much dissatisfied, what names has she of which her intelligent 
Sons are more proud than those which have been connected 
with the government of the United States ? In Revolutionary 
times, and in the earliest days of this Constitution, there was 
no State more honoured, or more deserving of honour. Where 
is she now ? And what a fall is there, my countrymen! But I 
leave her to her own reflections, commending to her, with all 
my heart, the due consideration of her own example in times 
now gone by. 

Fellow-citizens, there are some diseases of the mind as well 
as of the body, diseases of communities as well as diseases of 
individuals, that must be left to their own cure: at least it is 
wise to leave them so, until the last critical moment shall 
arrive. I hope it is not irreverent, and certainly it is not 
intended as reproach, when I say that I know no stronger 
expression in our language than that which describes the resto- 
ration of the wayward son, — "He came to himself." He had 
broken away from all the ties of love, family, and friendship. 
He had forsaken every thing which he had once regarded in his 
father's house. He had forsworn his natural sympathies, affec- 
tions, and habits, and taken his journey into a far country. He 
had gone away from himself and out of himself. But misfor- 
tune overtook him, and famine threatened him with starvation 
and death. No entreaties from home followed him, to beckon 
him back ; no admonitions from others warned him of his fate. 
But the hour of reflection had come, and nature and conscience 
wrought within him, until at length he came to himself. 

And now ye men of the new States of the South ! You are 
not of the original Thirteen. The battle had been fought and 
won, the Revolution achieved, and the Constitution established, 
before your States had any existence as States. You came to 
a prepared banquet, and had seats assigned you at table just as 
honourable as those which were filled by older guests. You 



546 WEBSTER. 

have been and are singularly prosperous ; and, if any one 
should deny this, you would at once contradict his assertion. 
You have bought vast quantities of choice and excellent land 
at the lowest price ; and if the public domain has not been lav- 
ished upon you, you will yourselves admit that it has been 
appropriated to your own uses by a very liberal hand. And yet 
in some of these States, not in all, persons are found in favour 
of a dissolution of the Union, or of secession from it. Such 
opinions are expressed even whete the general prosperity of 
the community has been most rapidly advanced. In the flour- 
ishing and interesting State of Mississippi, for example, there 
is a large party which insists that her grievances are intoler- 
able, that the whole body politic is in a state of suffering ; and 
all along, and through her whole extent on the Mississippi, a 
loud cry rings that her only remedy is "Secession, secession." 
Now, Gentlemen, what infliction does the State of Mississippi 
suffer under? "What oppression prostrates her strength or 
destroys her happiness ? Before we can judge of her proper 
remedy, we must know something of the disease ; and, for my 
part, I confess that the real evil existing in the case appears to 
me to be a certain inquietude or uneasiness growing out of a 
high degree of prosperity and a consciousness of wealth and 
power, which sometimes lead men to be ready for changes, and 
to push on unreasonably to still higher elevation. If this be 
the truth of the matter, her political doctors are about right. 
If the complaint spring from overwrought prosperity, for that 
disease I have no doubt that secession would prove a sovereign 
remedy. 

But I return to the leading topic on which I was engaged.— 
In the department of invention there have been wonderful ap- 
plications of science to arts within the last sixty years. The 
spacious hall of the Patent Office is at once the repository and 
proof of American inventive art and genius. The results are 
seen in the numerous improvements by which human labour is 
abridged. 

Without going into details, it may be sufficient to say, that 
many of the applications of steam to locomotion and manu- 
factures, of electricity and magnetism to the production of 
mechanical motion, the electrical telegraph, the registration of 
astronomical phenomena,* the art of multiplying engravings, the 
introduction and improvement among us of all the important 
inventions of the Old World, are striking indications of the 
progress of this country in the useful arts. The network of 
railroads and telegraphic lines by which this vast country is 



AN" APPEAL FOR THE UNION". 547 

reticulated have not only developed its resources, but united* 
emphatically in metallic bands, all parts of the Union. 

While the country has been expanding in dimensions, in 
numbers, and in wealth, the government has applied a wise 
forecast in the adoption of measures necessary, when the world 
shall no longer be at peace, to maintain the national honour, 
whether by appropriate displays of vigour abroad, or by well- 
adapted means of defence at home. A navy, which has so 
often illustrated our history by heroic achievements, though in 
peaceful times restrained in its operations to narrow limits, 
possesses, in its admirable elements, the means of great and 
sudden expansion, and is justly looked upon by the nation as 
the right arm of its power. An army, still smaller, but not less 
perfect in its detail, has on many a field exhibited the military 
aptitudes and prowess of the race, and demonstrated the wisdom 
which has presided over its organization and government. 

And this extension of territory embraced within the United 
States, increase of its population, commerce, and manufactures, 
development of its resources by canals and railroads, and 
rapidity of intercommunication by means of steam and elec- 
tricity, have all been accomplished without overthrow of, or 
danger to, the public liberties, by any assumption of military 
power; and indeed without any permanent increase of the 
army, except for the purpose of frontier defence, and of afford- 
ing a slight guard to the public property ; or of the navy, any 
further than to assure the navigator that, in whatsoever sea he 
shall sail his ship, he is protected by the stars and stripes of his 
country. This, too, has been done without the shedding of a 
drop of blood for treason or rebellion ; while systems of popu- 
lar representation have regularly been supported in the State 
governments and the general government ; while laws, national 
and State, of such a character have been passed, and have been 
so wisely administered, that I may stand up here to-day, and 
declare, as I now do declare, in the face of all the intelligence 
of the age, that, for the period which has elapsed from the day 
that Washington laid the foundation of the Capitol to the pres- 
ent time, there has been no country upon Earth in which life, 
liberty, and property have been more amply and steadily se- 
cured, or more freely enjoyed, than in these United States of 
America. Who is there that will deny this? Who is there 
prepared with a greater or a better example? Who is there 
that can stand upon the foundation of facts, acknowledged or 
proved, and assert that these our republican institutions have 
not answered the true ends of government beyond all precedent 
in human history? 

There is yet another view. There are still higher considera- 



548 WEBSTEK. 

tions. Man is an intellectual being, destined to immortality. 
There is a spirit in him, and the breath of the Almighty hath 
given him understanding. Then only is he tending toward his 
proper destiny, while he seeks for knowledge and virtue, for 
the will of his Maker, and for just conceptions of his own duty. 
Of all important questions, therefore, let this, the most impor- 
tant, be first asked and first answered : In what country of the 
habitable globe, of great extent and large population, are means 
of knowledge the most generally diffused and enjoyed among 
the people ? This question admits of one, and only one answer. 
It is here ; it is here in these United States ; it is among the 
descendants of those who settled at Jamestown ; of those who 
were pilgrims on the shore of Plymouth ; and of those other 
races of men who, in subsequent times, have become joined in 
this great American family. Let one fact, incapable of doubt 
or dispute, satisfy every mind on this point. The population of 
the United States is twenty-three millions. Now, take the map 
of the continent of Europe, and spread it out before you. Take 
your scale and your dividers, and lay off in one area, in any 
shape you please, a triangle, square, circle, parallelogram, or 
trapezoid, and of an extent that shall contain one hundred and 
fifty millions of people, and there will be found within the 
United States more persons who do habitually read and write 
than can be embraced within the lines of your demarcation. 

But there is something even more than this. Man is not only 
an intellectual, but he is also a religious being, and his religious 
feelings and habits require cultivation. Let the religious ele- 
ment in man's nature be neglected, let him be influenced by no 
higher motives than low self-interest, and subjected to no 
stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority, and he be- 
comes the creature of selfish passion or of blind fanaticism. 
The spectacle of a nation powerful and enlightened, but with- 
out Christian faith, has been presented, almost within our own 
day, as a warning beacon to the nations. On the other hand, 
the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentious- 
ness, incites to general benevolence and the practical acknowl- 
edgment of the brotherhood of man, inspires respect for law 
and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric, at the 
same time that it conducts the human soul upwards to the 
Author of its being. 

Now I think it safe to say, that a greater portion of the people 
of the United States attend public worship, decently clad, well 
behaved, and well seated, than of any other country of the civ- 
ilized world. Edifices of religion are seen everywhere. Their 
aggregate cost would amount to an immense sum of money. 
They are, in general, kept in good repair, and consecrated to the 



AK APPEAL FOR THE UIHOX. 549 

purpose of public worship. In these edifices the people regu- 
larly assemble on the Sabbath-day, which, by all classes, is 
sacredly set apart for rest from secular employment and for 
religious meditation and worship, to listen to the reading of the 
Holy Scriptures, and discourses from pious ministers of the 
several denominations. 

This attention to the wants of the intellect and of the soul, as 
manifested by the voluntary support of schools and colleges, of 
churches and benevolent institutions, is one of the most re- 
markable characteristics of the American people, not less strik- 
ingly exhibited in the new than in the older settlements of the 
country. On the spot where the first trees of the forest were 
felled, near the log cabins of the pioneers, are to be seen rising 
together the church and the school-house. So has it been from 
the beginning, and God grant that it may thus continue ! 

Who does not admit that this unparalleled growth in pros- 
perity and renown is the result, under Providence, of the union 
of these States under a general Constitution, which guarantees 
to each State a republican form of government, and to every 
man the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, free from civil tyranny or ecclesiastical domination ? 
i And, to bring home this idea to the present occasion, who 
does not feel that, when President Washington laid his hand 
on the foundation of the first Capitol, he performed a great 
work of perpetuation of the Union and the Constitution? 
Who does not feel that this seat of the general government, 
healthful in its situation, central in its position, near the moun- 
tains whence gush springs of wonderful virtue, teeming with 
Nature's richest products, and yet not far from the bays and 
the great estuaries of the sea, easily accessible, and generally 
agreeable in climate and association, does give strength to the 
union of these States? that this city — bearing an immortal 
name, with its broad streets and avenues, its public squares, 
and magnificent edifices of the general government, erected 
for the purpose of carrying on within them the important busi- 
ness of the several departments, for the reception of wonderful 
and curious inventions, for the preservation of the records of 
American learning and genius, of extensive collections of the 
products of Nature and Art, brought hither for study and com- 
parison from all parts of the world ; adorned with numerous 
churches, and sprinkled over, I am happy to say, with many 
public schools, where all the children of the city, without dis- 
tinction, have the means of obtaining a good education ; and 
with academies and colleges, professional schools and public 
libraries — should continue to receive, as it has heretofore 



550. WEBSTER. 

received, the fostering care of Congress, and should be re-: 

garded as the permanent seat of the national government? 

With each succeeding year new interest is added to the spot :, 
it becomes connected with all the historical associations of our 
country, with her statesmen and her orators; and, alas! its 
cemetery is annually enriched by the ashes of her chosen sons. 

Before us is the broad and beautiful river, separating two of 
the original thirteen States, which a late President, a man of 
determined purpose arid inflexible will, but patriotic heart, 
desired to span with arches of ever-enduring granite, sym- 
bolical of the firmly cemented union of the North and the 
South. That President was General Jackson. 

On its banks repose the ashes of the Father of his Country ; 
and at our side, by a singular felicity of position, overlooking 
the city which he designed, and which bears his name, rises to 
his memory the marble column, sublime in its simple grandeur, 
and fitly intended to reach a loftier height than any similar 
structure on the surface of the whole Earth. Let the votive 
offerings of his grateful countrymen be freely contributed, to 
carry this monument higher and still higher ! May I say, as on 
another occasion, " Let it rise ! let it rise, till it meet the Sun in; 
his coming ; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and 
parting day linger and play on its summit ! " 

Fellow-citizens, what contemplations are awakened in our 
minds as we assemble here to reenact a scene like that per- 
formed by "Washington I Me thinks I see his venerable form 
now before me, as presented in the glorious statue by Houdon, 
now in the Capitol of Virginia. He is dignified and grave ; but 
concern and anxiety seem to soften the lineaments of his coun- 
tenance. The government over which he presides is yet in the 
crisis of experiment. Not free from troubles at home, he sees 
the world in commotion and arms all around him. He sees 
that imposing foreign powers are half -disposed to try the 
strength of the recently-established American government. 
We perceive that mighty thoughts, mingled with fears as well 
as hopes, are struggling within him. He heads a short proces- 
sion over these then naked fields ; he crosses yonder stream on 
a fallen tree ; he ascends to the top of this eminence, whose 
original oaks of the forest stand as thick around him as if the 
spot had been devoted to Druidical worship, and here he per- 
forms the appointed duty. 

And now, fellow-citizens, if this vision were a reality; if 
Washington actually were now amongst us, and if he could 
draw around him the shades of the great public men of his own 
day, patriots and warriors, orators and statesmen, and were to 
address us in their presence, would he not say to us : "Ye men 



AN" APPEAL FOR THE UNION. 551 

of this generation, I rejoice, and thank God for being able to see 
that our labours and toils and sacrifices were not in vain. You 
are prosperous, you are happy, you are grateful ; the fire of lib- 
erty burns brightly and steadily in your hearts, while duty and 
the law restrain it from bursting forth in wild and destructive 
conflagration. Cherish liberty, as you love it ; cherish its secu- 
rities, as you wish to preserve it. Maintain the Constitution 
which we laboured so painfully to establish, and which has 
been to you such a source of inestimable blessings. Preserve 
the union of the States, cemented as it was by our prayers, our 
tears, and our blood. Be true to God, to your country, and to 
your duty. So shall the whole Eastern world follow the morn- 
ing Sun to contemplate you as a nation ; so shall all generations 
honour you, as they honour us ; and so shall that Almighty 
Power which so graciously protected us, and which now pro- 
tects you, shower its blessings upon you and your posterity." 

Great Father of your Country ! we heed your words ; Ave feel 
their force as if you now uttered them with lips of flesh and 
blood. Your example teaches us, your affectionate addresses 
teach us, your public life teaches us your sense of the value of 
the blessings of the Union. Those blessings our fathers have 
tasted, and we have tasted, and still taste. Nor do we intend 
that those who come after us shall be denied the same high 
fruition. Our honour as well as our happiness is concerned. 
We cannot, we dare not, we will not, betray our sacred trust. 
We will not filch from posterity the treasure placed in our 
hands to be transmitted to other generations. The bow that 
gilds the clouds in the heavens, the pillars that uphold the 
firmament, may disappear and fall away in the hour appointed 
by the will of God ; but, until that day comes, or so long as our 
lives may last, no ruthless hand shall undermine that bright 
arch of Union and Liberty which spans the continent from 
Washington to California. 

Fellow-citizens, we must sometimes be tolerant to folly, and 
patient at the sight of the extreme waywardness of men ; but I 
confess that, when I reflect on the renown of our past history, 
on our present prosperity and greatness, and on what the 
future hath yet to unfold, and when I see that there are men 
who can find in all this nothing good, nothing valuable, nothing 
truly glorious, I feel that all their reason has fled away from 
them, and left the entire control over their judgment and their 
actions to insanity and fanaticism ; and, more than all, fellow- 
citizens, if the purposes of fanatics and disunionists should be 
accomplished, the patriotic and intelligent of our generation 
would seek to hide themselves from the scorn of the world, and 
go about to find dishonourable graves. 



552 WEBSTER. 

Fellow-citizens, take courage; be of good cheer. We shall 
come to no such ignoble end. We shall live, and not die. 
During the period allotted to our several lives, we shall con- 
tinue to rejoice in the return of this anniversary. The ill- 
omened sounds of fanaticism will be hushed ; the ghastly spec- 
tres of Secession and Disunion will disappear ; and the enemies 
of united constitutional liberty, if their hatred cannot be ap- 
peased, may prepare to have their eyeballs seared as they be- 
hold the steady flight of the American eagle, on his burnished 
wings, for years and years to come. 

President Fillmore, it is your singularly good fortune to 
perform an act such as that which the earliest of your prede- 
cessors performed fifty-eight years ago. You stand where he 
stood ; you lay your hand on the corner-stone of a building 
designed greatly to extend that whose corner-stone he laid. 
Changed, changed is every thing around. The same Sun indeed 
shone upon his head which now shines upon yours. The same 
broad river rolled at his feet, and bathes his last resting-place, 
that now rolls at yours. But the site of this city was then 
mainly an open field. Streets and avenues have since been 
laid out and completed, squares and public grounds inclosed 
and ornamented, until the city which bears his name, although 
comparatively inconsiderable in numbers and wealth, has be- 
come quite fit to be the seat of government of a great and 
united people. 

Fellow-citizens, I now bring this, address to a close, by ex- 
pressing to you, in the words of the great Koman orator, the 
deepest wish of my heart, and which I know dwells deeply in 
the hearts of all who hear me : "Duomodo hsec opto ; unum, ut 

MORIENS POPULUM KOMANUM LIBERTTM RELINQTJAM ; llOC 

mihi majus a diis immortalibus dari nihil potest : alterum, ut 
ita cuique eveniat, ut de republica quisque mereatur. " 2 

And now, fellow-citizens, with hearts void of hatred, envy 
and malice towards our own countrymen, or any of them, or 
towards the subjects or citizens of other governments, or 
towards any member of the great family of Man ; but exulting, 
nevertheless, in our own peace, security, and happiness, in the 
grateful remembrance of the past, and the glorious hopes of the 
future, let us return to our homes, and with all humility and 
devotion offer our thanks to the Father of all our mercies, polit- 
ical, social, and religious. 

2 This quotation is from Cicero, and maybe Englished thus: "Only these 
two things I crave,— first, that at my death I may leave the Roman people free, 
than which no greater boon can be granted me by the immortal gods; next, that 
every man's lot may be carved out to him according to his merits as a citizen of 
the republic." 



FRANCIS BACON 

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 



Francis Bacon, the great Light of modern Philosophy, was the son of 
Sir Nicholas Bacon, who for twenty years held the office of Lord Keeper 
of the Great Seal. He was born at York House, London, the residence of 
his father, on the 22d of January, 1561. His mother, Anne Cooke, was 
his father's second wife, and had one other son, Anthony, two j-ears older 
than Francis. As her oldest sister was the wife of Lord Treasurer Bur- 
leigh, Francis stood, from his birth, in a sort of double relation to the 
Court. Both Lady Burleigh and Lady Bacon were highly educated 
women ; their father, Sir Anthony Cooke, being the preceptor of King 
Edward the Sixth. Lady BacOn, before her marriage, translated Bishop 
Jewel's Apology into Latin, and is said to have done it so well, that the 
good prelate could discover no error in it, nor suggest any alteration. 

Of the childhood of Francis and his brother little is known. Their early 
education was superintended by their accomplished mother. The health 
of Francis was delicate and fragile ; which may partly account for the stu- 
dious and thoughtful turn which seems to have marked his boyhood. 
Queen Elizabeth, it is said, took special delight in " trying him with ques- 
tions," when he was a little boy; and was so much pleased with the sense 
and gravity of his answers, that she used to call him in sport her " young 
Lord" Keeper." And Bacon himself tells us that, in his boyhood, the 
Queen once asked him how old he was, and that he promptly replied, 
" Two years younger than your Majesty's reign." It is also said that, 
when very young, he stole away from his playfellows, to investigate the 
cause of a singular echo in St. James's Fields, which had excited his 
curiosity. 

At the age of thirteen, Bacon entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where 
he remained three years, and then left without taking a degree. It is said 
that, while in college, he studied diligently the great models of antiquity ; 
but even at that early age he took a dislike to the philosophy of Aristotle, 
not on account of the author, to whom he ascribed all high attributes, but 
for the unfrnitfulness of the method ; it being a philosophy strong only for 
disputations and contentions, but barren of works for the benefit of the 
life of man. 

The Lord Keeper had designed his son Francis for a public career as a 
statesman or diplomatist, and with that view took him out of college, at 
the age of sixteen, and sent him /o Paris, where he spent some time under 
the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador at the French Court. 
It is said that while there he invented an ingenious method of writing in 
cipher. The main purpose in sending him abroad was, that he might 
study men ; and with that view he travelled to various places in France 
and Italy ; but it well appears that, though he was a keen observer of men, 
he could not withdraw his mind altogether from the investigation of natu- 
ral phenomena. After about three years spent on the Continent, he was 
called home by the sudden death of his father. This event changed the 
whole course of his life. Sir Nicholas had intended to purchase an estate 
for Francis, as he had done for his other sons ; but, as death came upon 



554 



BACON. 



him before this intention was carried out, the money was divided equally 
among all his children, the youngest son being thus left with only one fifth 
of what was -intended for him : so that, instead of living, only to study, he 
was under the necessity of studying how to live. 

Bacon now fixed upon the law as his profession, and in 1580 became a 
member of Gray's Inn, which was one of the four principal schools or col- 
leges for students of the law in London. As he had great power of appli- 
cation in whatever he undertook, his all-gifted mind made swift advances in 
legal studies, and in June, 1582, he was admitted as an utter barrister, 
which was "the first degree in legal practice. February, 1586, saw him 
advanced to what was called the high table of Gray's Inn, and he soon 
after became a bencher. Meanwhile he had kept up his philosophical 
studies, and published the first fruits thereof in a work rather ambitiously 
entitled The Greatest Birth of Time; which, however, fell so dead upon the 
world that it is now heard of only in one of his letters, written long after- 
wards, to Father Fulgentio ; and its only effect at the time was to mark 
him out as a rash speculatist. 

In 1584, while yet a student of Gray's Inn, Bacon was elected to Parlia- 
ment by one of the borough constituencies of Dorsetshire. On this great 
stage he continued to figure conspicuously for upwards of thirty years. In 
the Fall of 1585 he took his seat in the House of Commons for Taunton ; 
and in the next Parliament we find him representing: Liverpool. In Feb- 
ruary, 1593, he was member for the County of Middlesex ; and from that 
time onward his reputation as a statesman stood so high, that various 
constituencies appear to have striven for the honour of having him as their 
representative ; and in some instances he was elected for several places at 
the same time. Bacon was an exceedingly industrious and useful member 
of Parliament. As a practical legislator, he was probably second to no man 
of his time. His great skill and diligence in the business of his place caused 
him to be put upon many important committees; and whenever he ad- 
dressed the whole House, as he very often did, he appears to have surpassed 
all the others both in commanding and rewarding the attention of the 
members. Ben Jonson tells us that " the fear of every man who heard him 
was, lest he should make an end." 

One passage in his parliamentary life seems to call for some special notice. 
In the Parliament of 1593, upon a question of granting supplies, the two 
Houses appointed each a committee, to confer together, and make a joint 
report. When the result of that conference came up, Bacon opposed the 
action, claiming for the Commons the exclusive right to originate bills of 
that nature; and he moved that the House should "proceed herein by 
themselves apart from their Lordships." Thus his opposition went upon 
the ground of privilege. Nevertheless, both on that point, and also on the 
terms of the subsidy, he was outvoted, and he acquiesced. His conduct was 
very offensive to the Queen ; and he is charged with having met her repri- 
mand with "the most abject apologies." Even if this were true, it was 
nothing more than the whole House of Commons had often done before. 
But we have two letters from Bacon on the subject, addressed to Burleigh 
and Essex; both in a tone of manly sclf-justihcation. The Queen was 
angry at his speeches, and he expressed his grief that she should " retain an 
hard conceit of them." He adds the following: "It might please her 
sacred Majesty to think what my end should be in those speeches, if it were 
not duty, and duty alone. / am not so simple but 1 know the common beaten 
way to please. And whereas popularity hath been objected, I muse what 
care I should take to please many, that taketh a course of life to deal Avith 
few." 

Up to this time, and for some years longer, Bacon gained no lucrative 
position. For reasons which I cannot stay to explain, his uncle, the Lord 
Treasurer, lent him but scanty and grudging help. The only thing indeed 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. $55, 

which his Lordship did for this illustrious kinsman was to procure for him; 
in 1589, the reversion of the clerkship of the Star Chamber, which was 
worth some £1600 a year, but which did not fali vacant till twenty years 
after. Though Bacon did his work well, both as a lawyer and a legislator, 
still his thoughts and aspirations pointed elsewhere. He had indeed a 
strong desire of office, but it was not a selfish desire : it was rather the in- 
structive yearning of his most original and comprehensive genius for leave 
to range in its proper home. His highest ambition was for a place which 
should supply his needs, and at the same time give him leisure to prosecute 
his intellectual conquests. Having taken all knowledge to be his province, 
with his vast contemplative ends he united but moderate civil ends. He 
had indeed an ardent, admiring, and steadfast friend in the Earl of Essex, 
who did all he could to help him in the matter of office and salary ; but 
Essex was so rash in his temper, so ill-judging and so headstrong in his 
proceedings, that his friendship proved rather a hindrance than a help. 

In 1593 the office of Attorney-General became vacant. Bacon had hopes 
of the place, and Essex lent his influence in that behalf; but the Queen's 
displeasure could not be overcome. After a delay of many months, during 
which Bacon was kept in -suspense, the office was given to Sir Edward 
Coke. By this promotion, the place of Solicitor-General fell vacant. Bacon 
then fixed his eye on that office, and Essex worked for him with all his 
might ; but, after a suspense of a year and a half, his hopes were again 
blasted by the appointment of Sergeant Fleming. Chagrined and mortified 
at the failure of his suit, the generous Essex next conceived the design of 
compensating Bacon with a liberal share of his own property. He accord- 
ingly proposed to give him an estate worth about £1800, equivalent to some 
$50,000 in our time. But Bacon's insight of character naturally made 
him reluctant to incur such obligations, as he could not but see that the 
Earl was likely to mar all by his violent courses. He declined the offer. 
Essex insisted, and Bacon at last yielded, but with such words as show that 
he had too just a presentiment of what the Earl was coming to. "My 
Lord," said he, "I see I must be your homager and hold land of your gift": 
but do you know the manner of doing homage by law ? Always it is with 
a saving of his faith to the King and his other lords ; and therefore, my 
Lord, I can be no more yours than I was, and it must be with the ancient 
savings." 

In April, 1596, the Mastership of the Rolls — an office having charge of 
all patents that pass the Great Seal, and of the records of the Chancery 
Court — became vacant, and Bacon was a candidate for the place. Essex 
again supported his claims, but with the same result as before, — suspense 
and final disappointment. This was followed, the next year, by an estrange- 
ment between Bacon and Essex. The Earl's rash and impetuous nature 
was carrying him into dangerous ways, and Bacon's wise counsels and 
friendly warnings were naturally distasteful to a man so averse to any self- 
restraint. In the Spring of 1599, before Essex set out on his expedition to 
Ireland, Bacon had so far renewed his intercourse with him as to write him 
several friendly letters of advice, warning him that " merit is worthier than 
fame," and that " obedience is better than sacrifice." In Septelnber follow- 
ing, the Earl suddenly returned from that ill-starred expedition, covered 
with dishonour, and not free from disloyal and defiant thoughts. 

I now come to what is commonly regarded as the darkest passage in 
Bacon's life. In some respects it is rather dark indeed ; yet the indictment, 
it seems to me, has sometimes been greatly overcharged, — an error which I 
would fain avoid. Some years before this time, Bacon had been appointed 
by the Queen one of her counsel learned in the law. This office he still 
held, and was of course bound to its duties. The crisis, which he had long 
foreboded, and had done his utmost to prevent, had now come. In the 
Spring of 1600 the Queen was for proceeding against Essex by public in- 



55G EACfOK. l 

formation. Bacon dissuaded her from this, hut not without giving her 
offence. She finally resolved that the matter should he heard before a 
commission, and her counsel had their parts assigned them. Bacon begged 
to be excused, but held himself ready to obey the Queen's commands, 
thinking that by yielding so far he might be in a better position to serve 
Essex. At this time he knew nothing of the Earl's treasonable designs, 
and looked upon the affair as a storm that would soon blow over. Essex 
was acquitted of disloyalty, but censured for contempt and disobedience. 
By the Queen's order, Bacon drew up a narrative of what had passed, in 
which he touched the Earl's faults so tenderly, that the Queen told him 
" she perceived old love would not easily be forgotten" ; and he with great 
adroitness replied that he hoped she meant that of herself. And in a letter 
written about this time, he speaks as follows : " For my Lord of Essex, I 
am not servile to him, having regard to my superior duty. I have been 
much bound to him. And, on the other side, I have spent more time and 
more thoughts about his well-doing than I ever did about mine own." 

Essex was again at large, and had his fate once more in his own hands. 
But it soon appeared that he was rather emboldened than checked in his 
fatal career. While he was driving on his plots in secret, the Queen had 
sources of information which Bacon knew not of. In his ignorance of the 
whole truth, Bacon still kept up his defence of Essex, till at last the Queen, 
supposing him to know as much as herself, got so angry at his importunity 
that she would no longer see him. This was in the Fall of 1600. Early 
in January, 1601, Bacon was again admitted to the Queen's presence, and 
spoke his mind to her as follows : " Madam, I see you withdraw your 
favour from me, and now that I have lost many friends for your sake, I 
shall lose you too. A great many love me not, because they think I have 
been against my Lord Essex ; and you love me not, because you know I 
have been for him : yet will I never repent me that I have dealt in simplic- 
ity of heart towards you both, without respect of cautions to myself." The 
Queen was moved by his earnestness, and spoke kindly to him, but said 
nothing of Essex. Bacon then determined to meddle no more in the mat- 
ter, and did not see the Queen again till the Earl had put himself beyond 
the reach of intercession. 

Thenceforth Essex seems to have cast off all restraint. Left to his own 
head, and perhaps to the bad counsels of some who were using him as a 
tool, he plunged into crime with the recklessness of downright infatuation. 
Of his doings suffice it to say that they were clearly treasonable, and that 
nothing less than treason could possibly be made out of them. On the 19th 
of February he was formally arraigned and brought to trial. Bacon, as 
one of the Queen's counsel, took the part assigned to him. The defence 
broke down at all points, and Essex was of course condemned. Bacon 
spoke twice in the trial ; and of his course the worst that can fairly be said 
appears to be, that the dues of personal gratitude did not withhold him 
from pressing the argument against the Earl somewhat more harshly than 
his duty to the Crown absolutely required. On the one hand, it is allowed 
that Essex, had "spent all his power, might, authority, and amity" in 
Bacon's behalf. On the other hand, Bacon had tried his utmost to serve 
Essex ; he had stuck by him to the great and manifest peril of himself, 
and never ceased to plead his cause, till that cause became utterly hopeless. 
How much a man ought to stake in such a case, or whether he ought to 
stake his all, is a question not easy to decide ; and in such a sharp conflict 
between personal gratitude and public duty, there will always be differ- 
ences of opinion. 

Much the same is to be said touching the part sustained by Bacon after 
the execution. Essex was something of a favourite with the people, and 
his fate drew forth some marks of popular odium against the Queen. It 
was deemed necessary to vindicate the action of the government, and to 



SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 557 

Bacon was assigned the task of drawing up, or of dressing into shape, "A 
Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by 
Robert late Earl of Essex," &c, which was published in 1601. His instruc- 
tions for the writing were very precise, and his first draft was submitted to 
certain councillors, "who made almost a new writing," so that Bacon him- 
self " gave only Avords and form of style." In reference to this paper it has 
been said that Bacon "exercised his literary talents to blacken the Earl's 
memory." Bu.t it does not appear that he carried the blackening process 
any further than a fair and just statement of the case would have that effect. 
Soon after the publication, a parliamentary election was held, and Bacon 
was returned both by Ipswich and St. Albans ; which infers that he had 
not lost ground in the public confidence. Upon the whole, that Bacon was 
enthusiastic in his friendship, probably none will affirm. But then neither 
was he bitter in his enmities. And if there was little nobleness of soul, 
there was surely nothing of malice, in his composition. In his treatment 
of Essex there is indeed nothing to praise ; nor, as it seems to me, is there 
very much to be positively blamed. To pronounce him " the meanest of 
mankind," is surely going too far ; but that there was more than enough 
Of meanness in him, must, I fear, be granted; for of that article " a little 
more than a little is by much too much." 

The death of the Queen, in March, 1603, and the accession of James the 
First made no considerable change in Bacon's prospects. He was anxious 
to be knighted, his chief reason being, " because I have found out an alder- 
man's daughter, an handsome maiden, to my liking." Accordingly, in 
July he was dubbed a knight by the King; but it was rather the reverse of 
an honour, as some three hundred others were dubbed at the same time. 
He was also elected to the new Parliament, both at Ipswich and St. 
Albans, and continued to take a very prominent part in the business of the 
House. In August, his office, as one of the learned counsel, was confirmed 
to him by patent, together with a pension of .£60 a year. In May, 1606, he 
was married to Alice Barnham, the " handsome maiden" already men- 
tioned. She was the daughter of a London merchant, and had a fortune of 
£220 a-year, which was settled upon herself, with an addition of £500 
a-year from her husband. 

The accession of King James naturally drew on a proposal for uniting 
the two kingdoms of England and Scotland. This most wise measure was 
strongly opposed by many of the English ; but Bacon supported it with all 
the weight of his name and talents, and doubtless thereby recommended 
himself not a little to the King's favour. In June, 1607, he attained the 
long-sought office of Solicitor-General; and the next year the clerkship of 
the Star-Chambcr became vacant. Bacon had waited for it nearly twenty 
years. In October, 1613, the place of Attorney-General again fell vacant, 
and Bacon succeeded to it. The duties of this office brought him into con- 
nection with the celebrated case of Peachman, whieh has entailed another 
blot on his name. Peachman was an aged clergyman who, for some eccle- 
siastical offence, had been cited before the Court of High Commission, 
and deprived of his orders. Before the sentence, his house was searched, 
and an unpublished sermon was found, which was alleged to contain trea- 
sonable matter. Peachman was believed to have accomplices, and, as he 
would not reveal them, the Council resolved on putting him to torture. By 
the common law, the use of torture for extracting evidence was deemed 
illegal ; but such use was held to be justified in this case on the ground of 
its being for the purpose of discovery, and not of evidence. But it does 
not appear that Bacon was at all responsible for this outrage, any further 
than that, as Attorney-General, he was one of the commission appointed 
to attend the examination of the prisoner. And his letters show that he 
engaged in the affair with reluctance, and that the step was taken against 
his advice. It is also alleged that, to procure a capital sentence, Bacon 



558 bacon - . 

tampered with the judges of the King's Bench; but as the case was not to 
be tried by any of those judges, it does not well appear why he should have 
tampered with them for that purpose. In August, 1615* Pcachman was 
tried at Taunton, and was convicted of high treason ; but the capital sen- 
tence was never carried out, because " many of the judges were of opinion 
that it was not treason." 

In June, 1616, Bacon was made a member of the Privy Council, and 
was formally congratulated thereupon by the University of Cambridge, 
which he then represented in Parliament. In March, 1617, Lord Chan- 
cellor Ellesmere resigned, and Bacon was appointed Lord Keeper of the 
Great Seal, A week later the King set out for Scotland, leaving his new 
Lord Keeper at the head of the Council, to manage affairs in his absence. 
In January, 1618, Sir Francis became Lord Chancellor, and in the follow- 
ing July was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Verulam. In the 
work of Chancery, his energy and dispatch were something prodigious. 
Within three months after he became Lord Keeper, he made a clean sweep 
of all the accumulated cases then on hand, and reported that there was not 
one cause remaining unheard. Seldom, if ever, before, had the work of 
that high court been so promptly done, or done more to the satisfaction of 
the public. In January, 1621, Bacon was created Viscount of St. Albans, 
and in the patent of promotion was particularly commended for his " integ- 
rity in the administration of justice." 

Unfortunately, during this period, Bacon could not make headway in 
political life without paying court to a bold, insolent, and unscrupulous 
upstart. England had a weak though learned King, and that King was 
mainly governed by a greedy and prodigal favourite, George Villiers, Duke 
of Buckingham, whom James had raised to that height for his handsome 
person and dashing manners. Buckingham had set his heart upon what 
was called " the Spanish match," that is, the marriage of Charles, Prince of 
Wales, afterwards King Charles the First, to a Spanish Princess. Bacon 
wisely used his influence with the King against that match, and probably 
was in a great measure the means of defeating it. He thereby incurred the 
resentment of Buckingham, though he had specially laid himself out in 
wise advice to him ; and he stooped to very unworthy atonements in order 
to appease his anger and regain his favour. But Buckingham was all- 
powerful with the King, and he greatly abused that power, to the oppression 
of the people and the misgovernment of the kingdom. In his need and 
greed and vainglory, he availed himself of whatever twist he had on the 
too supple Chancellor, and doubtless did all he could to pervert justice in 
the Chancery, in order to repair the waste of his boundless prodigality. 
Hence Bacon became involved in practices which wrought his downfall, 
and have covered his name with dishonour. 

In January, 1621, three days after Bacon's last promotion, Parliament 
met, and was not in a mood to be trifled with. A few days later, a com- 
mittee was appointed, to report concerning the courts of justice. Their 
report, made on the 15th of March, fell like a thunderclap: the Lord 
Chancellor was charged with corruption in his office, and instances were 
alleged in proof. Measures were forthwith taken for his impeachment. 
Before the time of trial came, twenty-two cases of bribery were drawn up 
against him. Bacon, sick unto death, as he thought himself, felt that his 
enemies had closed upon him, and begged only & fair hearing, that he might 
give them an ingenuous answer. To the King he wrote as follows : " For 
the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the books of hearts 
shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain 
of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice ; 
howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times." And in 
his answer he says, — " I never had bribe or reward in my eye or thought 
when I gave sentence or order." These, to be sure, are substantially tanta* 




SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 559 

mount to a confession of the matter charged. Nevertheless he was for' 
proceeding with his defence, but from this the King and Buckingham 
dissuaded him ; for what cause, or by what arguments, is not known. In- 
stead of standing trial, he wrote to the Lords, — " I find matter sufficicn t and 
full, both to move me to desert my defence, and to move your Lordships to 
condemn and censure me." So, on the 30th of April, his full confession 
was read before the Lords, in which he says, — " I do plainly and ingenu- 
ously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and* do renounce all defence." 
One' of the charges was, that he had given way to great exactions by his 
servants ; and " he confessed it to be a great fault, that he had looked no 
better to his servants." The sentence was, a fine of £40,000, imprisonment 
during the King's pleasure, incapability of holding any office in the State, 
or of sitting in Parliament, and prohibition to come within the verge of the 
Court. His own comment on this verdict is, " I was the justest judge that 
was in England these fifty years ; but it was the justest censure in Parlia- 
ment that was these two hundred years." The severest parts of the 
sentence were very soon remitted ; and within a year the whole was 
remitted, and also a pension of £1300 a-year conferred upon him by the 
King. 

Such is the upshot of this sad tale. Still it does not appear, nor is it 
alleged, that Bacon took bribes for the perversion of justice. During his 
Chancellorship he made orders and decrees at the rate of two thousand 
a-year. Of these decrees not one was ever set aside. None of his judgments 
were reversed. Even those who first charged him with taking money ad- 
mitted that he decided against them. The truth seems to be, that in this 
case the accumulated faults of the office were visited on the individual in- 
cumbent. Nor, perhaps, could they have been effectually cured but by the 
destruction of the very man who was the greatest that had complied with 
them : by such a sacrifice, they might indeed become so unspeakably odious, 
that even the worst men would take care to shun them. The Parliament 
was hot and stout, as it had reason to be, against the maladministration of 
the State. But they were more just in their anger than discriminating as 
to its objects. They demanded victims; and Bacon, in some respects, 
would be a most acceptable sacrifice, since the very height whereon he 
stood would make his fall the more exemplary. Besides, if Parliament 
could not get at the Chancellor, they might entertain the thought of strik- 
ing higher. And indeed the King and Buckingham seem to have been 
apprehensive that Bacon might triumph, should he pi*oceed in his own 
defence, (for who could be expected to withstand so potent an enchanter, 
coming to the rescue of his good name'?) in which case the public resent- 
ment, sharpened by defeat, might turn to other objects, and demand a 
dearer sacrifice. 

Henceforth Bacon lived in strict retirement, and gave himself up unre- 
servedly to labours in which his heart was at home. He was among the 
Peers summoned to the first Parliament of Charles the First; but he did 
not take his seat. For the last five years his health was very feeble, and he 
was constantly looking death in the face. At last, a cold, caught in an ex- 
periment to test the preserving qualities of snow, resulted in a fever ; and, 
after lingering a week, he died on the morning of Easter-day, April 9, 1626. 

If Bacon's political life was, in some respects, ignoble and false, his intel- 
lectual life was altogether noble and true, and has perhaps been more 
fruitful in substantial help to mankind than that of any other man. The 
first instalment of his Essays, ten in number/ was published in 1597, in a 
small volume, which also contained his Colours of Good and Evil, and his 
Meditationes Sacra. Some of these Essays were afterwards enlarged, and 
others added to them from time to time, in repeated editions, till at last 
the whole fifty-eight appeared together in 1625. In 1605, was published 
his Advancement of Learning, which was afterwards recast, enlarged, trans- 



560 BACOK. 



lated into Latin, and published in 1623, with the title De Augmentis Scien- 
tiarum. In 1609, his Wisdom of the Ancients came forth, translated into 
Latin. His Novum Organum made its appearance in the Fall of 1620. 
The proper English of this title is The New Instrument; but the work is 
occupied with setting forth what is known as the Baconian, that is, the 
Inductive or Experimental Method of Scientific Investigation. It was 
the great work of his life, and so he regarded it, and kept toiling at it for 
thirty years. The object of the work, as stated by himself, was to " enlarge 
the bounds of reason and endow man's estate with new value." As his 
plan contemplated a much larger work, of which this was but a part, he 
gave, as his reason for publishing it, that he felt his life hastening to its 
close, and wished that portion of his work at least to be saved. The Novum- 
Organum was followed, in 1622, by his History of Henry the Seventh. Be- 
sides these, he has various other works, both professional and philosophi- 
cal, but which my space does not permit me to mention in detail. 

Bacon appears to have been specially inspired with the faith, that a true 
and genuine knowledge of Nature would arm its possessor with Nature's 
power, by enabling him to harness up her forces and put them to work for 
the service of man. To this faith he clung with a tenacity that nothing 
could relax. And so strong was he in this faith, that he could not admit 
any knowledge of Nature to be real, which did not confer such power. 
Thus in his view power is the test and measure of knowledge ; and this I 
take to be the true sense of the Baconian axiom, " knowledge is power." 
And this great idea, together with the method which it involves, was itself 
a prophecy, or rather the seminal principle, of all the stupendous achieve- 
ments which Science has since made in the mastery of Nature. 

I quote from Sir James Mackintosh : " That in which Bacon most ex- 
celled all other men was the range and compass of his intellectual view, 
and the power of contemplating many and distant objects together with- 
out indistinctness or confusion. This wide-ranging intellect was illumi- 
nated by the brightest Fancy that ever contented itself with the office of 
only ministering to Reason ; and from this singular relation of the two 
grand faculties of man it has resulted, that his philosophy, though illus- 
trated still more than adorned by the utmost splendour of imagery, con- 
tinues still subject to the undivided supremacy of Intellect. In the midst 
of all the prodigality of an imagination which, had it been independent, 
would have been poetical, his opinions remained severely rational." 

But, with all his greatness and beauty of intellect, Bacon was sadly 
wanting in moral elevation. In his position, a high and delicate honour, 
the sensitive chastity of principle which feels a stain as a wound, was es- 
pecially needful for his safety ; but it evidently had no ruling place in his 
breast. Still, though his intellectual merits can hardly be overdrawn, it is 
easy to overdraw his moral defects. He was not only greatly admired as a 
thinker, but deeply loved and honoured as a man, by many of the best and 
purest men of the time; which could hardly have been the case but that, 
with all his blemishes, he had great moral and social virtues. Though 
often straitened for means, he was always generous to his servants : his 
temper and carriage were eminently gentle and humane : he was never ac- 
cused of insolence to any human being, which is the common pleasure of 
mean-spirited men : his conduct in Parliament was manly, his views as a 
legislator were liberal, and leaning strongly towards improvement: it is 
not pretended that he ever gave an unjust or illegal judgment as Chancel- 
lor : his private life was blameless, and abounding in works of piety and 
charity : and his losing the favour of the King and Buckingham, when 
they were in the full career of rapacity and corruption, fairly infers him to 
have resisted them as much as he could without losing the power to resist 
them at all. 



ten- 



FRANCIS BACON. 



ESSAYS.* 



OF TKUTH. 

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for 
an answer. 1 Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and 
count it a bondage to fix a belief ; affecting free-will in think- 
ing, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers 
of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing 2 
wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much 
blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not 
only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of 
truth, nor, again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men's 
thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour ; but a natural though 
corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the 
Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what 
should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they 
make for pleasure, as with poets, 3 nor for advantage, as with 
the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this 
same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show 
the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so 
stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come 
to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not 
rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best 

* Bacon's Essays are the best-known and most popular of all his works. It is 
also one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest 
advantage; the novelty and depth of his reflections often receiving a strong 
relief from the triteness of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end 
in a few hours; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark 
in it something unobserved before. This indeed is a characteristic of all Ba- 
con's writings, and only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they 
furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our 
torpid faculties.— Dcgald Stewart. 

1 Bacon, I think, mistakes here. Pilate seems to be in any thing but a jesting 
mood. He is evidently much interested in the Prisoner before him, and is sur- 
prised, for an instant, out of his oflicial propriety; but presently bethinks him- 
self that the question is altogether beside his oflicial duty, and proceeds at once 
to the business in hand. 

2 Discoursing in the sense of discursive ; that is, roving or unsettled. 

3 Bacon here supposes a, fiction to be the same thing as a lie. But, properly 
speaking, poetry is antithetic, not to truth, but to matter of fact. 



562 BACOK. 

in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. 
Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's 
minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imagi- 
nations as one would, and the like, it would leave the minds of 
a number of men poor shrunken-things, full of melancholy and 
indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves ? One of the fa- 
thers, in great severity, called poesy vinrnn dcemonum* because it 
filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a 
lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the 
lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as 
we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in 
men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which 
only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, 
which is the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of 
truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which 
is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. 
The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the 
light of the sense ; the last was the light of reason ; and His 
sabbath work ever since is the illumination of His Spirit. 
First, He breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos ; 
then He breathed light into the face of man ; and still He 
breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The, 
poet that beautified the sect, 5 that was otherwise inferior to the 
rest, saith yet excellently well: "It is a pleasure to stand 
upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleas- 
ure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and 
the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable 
to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth," (a hill not 
to be commanded, 6 and where the air is always clear and 
serene,) "and to see the errors and wanderings, and mists and 
tempests, in the vale below:" 7 so always that this prospect 8 be 
with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is 
Heaven upon Earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest 
in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. 

4 " The wine of evil spirits." 

5 The allusion is to Lucretius, the Roman poet, and to the Epicurean sect of 
philosophers, whose doctrines Lucretius clothed in their most attractive garb. 
Epicurus himself was of a pure and blameless life; but his leading tenet was 
that the chief aim of all philosophy should be to secure health of body and tran- 
quillity of mind. The using, however, of the term pleasure, to express this 
object, has at all times exposed the system to reproach; and, in fact, the name 
of the sect has too often served as a cloak for luxury and libertinism. 

6 That is, a hill having no higher hill in its neighbourhood. So, in a military 
sense, a higher hill commands a lower one standing near it. 

7 This is rather a paraphrase than a translation of the fine passage in 
Lucretius. 

8 Prospect is here used actively; that is, in the sense of overlooking or i 
down upon. 



OF DEATH. 563 

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth 
of civil business : It will be acknowledged, even by those that 
practise it not, that clear and round 9 dealing is the honour of 
man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin 
of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, 
but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are 
the goings of the serpent ; which goeth basely upon the belly, 
and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a 
man with shame as to be found false and perfidious: and there- 
fore Montaigne 1 saith prettily, when he inquired the reason 
why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an 
odious charge: saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a 
man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God 
and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks 
from man." Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of 
faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall 
be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the gener- 
ations of men; it being foretold that, when "Christ cometh," 
He shall, not "find faith upon the Earth." 



OF DEATH. 2 



Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark ; and as 
that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the 
other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of 
sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious ; but 
the fear of it, as a tribute due unto Nature, is weak. Yet in 
religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and 
of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books of 
mortification, that a man should think with himself what the 
pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured ; and 
thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole 

9 Plain, direct, downright are among the old senses of round. 

1 Michael de Montaigne, the celebrated French Essayist. His Essays em- 
brace a variety of topics, which are treated in a sprightly and entertaining 
manner, and are replete with remarks indicative of strong native good sense. 
He died in 1.392. The quotation is from the second book of his Essays : " Lying 
is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch, an ancient writer, paints in most 
disgraceful colours, when he says that it is ' affording testimony that one first 
despises God, and then fears men.' It is not possible more happily to describe 
its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature ; for can we imagine any thing 
more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to 
God?" 

2 A portion of this Essay is borrowed from the writings of Seneca. 



564 bacon. 

body is corrupted and dissolved ; when many times death pass- 
eth with less pain than the torture of a limb ; for the most vital 
parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake 
only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, Pompa 
mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa? Groans and convulsions, 
and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blacks 4 and ob- 
sequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the 
observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak 
but it mates 5 and masters the fear of death ; and therefore 
death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many at- 
tendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge 
triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honour aspireth to it ; 
grief flieth to it; fear preoccupateth 6 it; nay, we read, after 
Otho the emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest 
of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to 
their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Sen- 
eca adds, niceness and satiety: Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris : 
mori velle, non tantumfortis aut miser, sed etiamfastidiosus potest. 1 
A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, 
only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over. 
It is no less worthy to observe, how little alteration in good 
spirits the approaches of death make ; for they appear to be the 
same men till the last instant. Augustus Caesar died in a com- 
pliment : Livia, conjugiinostrimemor, vive ei vale: s Tiberius in 
dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him : Jam Tiberium vires et 
corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant : 9 Vespasian in a jest, sitting 
upon a stool: Utputo, Deusjio: 1 Galba with a sentence, Feri, si ex 
re sit populi Bomani, 2 holding forth his neck: Septimus Severus 
in despatch : Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum ; 3 and the like. 
Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by 
their great preparations made it appear more fearful. Better 

3 "The array of the death-bed has more terrors than death itself." This 
quotation is from Seneca. 

4 He probably alludes to the custom of hanging the room with black where 
the body of the deceased lay; a practice usual in Bacon's time. 

5 To mate, or to amate, is to overpower, to subdue. So in Macbeth, v., 1 : " My 
mind she has mated, and amazed my sight." 

. 6 Preoccupate in the Latin sense of anticipate. 

7 " Rellect how oiten you do the same things : a man may wish to die, not 
only because he is either brave or wretched, but even because he is surfeited 
with life." 

8 " Livia, mindful of our union, live on, and fare thee well." 

9 " His bodily strength and vitality were now forsaking Tiberius, but not his 
duplicity." 

1 "I am growing into a god, I reckon." This was said as a rebuke of his 
flatterers, as in the well-known case of Canute reproving his courtiers. 

2 " Strike, if it will do the Roman people any good." 

3 "Be quick, if there remains any thing for me to do." 



OF UNITY IK RELIGION. 565 

saith he, quijinem vitce extremum inter munera ponit naturce.* It 
is as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little infant perhaps 
the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest 
pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood ; who, for the 
time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and 
bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of 
death : but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc 
dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expecta- 
tions. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good 
fame, and extinguisheth envy : JExtinctus amabitur idem. 5 



OP UNITY IK RELIGION. 

Religion being the chief band of human society, it is a happy 
thing when itself is well contained within the true band of 
unity. The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils un- 
known to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion 
of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in 
any constant belief ; for you may imagine what kind of faith 
theirs was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church 
were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, that He 
is a jealous God ; and therefore His worship and religion will 
endure no mixture nor partner. We shall therefore speak a 
few words concerning the unity of the Church: what are the 
fruits thereof ; what the bounds ; and what the means. 

The fruits of unity (next unto the well-pleasing of God, which 
is all in all) are two ; the one towards those that are without the 
Church, the other towards those that are within. For the 
former, it is certain that heresies and schisms are of all others 
the greatest scandals ; yea, more than corruption of manners : 
for as in the natural body a wound or solution of continuity is 
worse than a corrupt humour, so in the spiritual. So that noth- 
ing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men 
out of the Church, as breach of unity: and therefore, whenso- 
ever it cometh to that pass that one saith, Ecce in Deserto," an- 
other saith, Ecce in penetralibus ; 8 that is, when some men seek 

4 " Who regards death as one of Nature's boons." The passage is quoted, 
but with some inaccuracy, from Juvenal. 
5. " The same man will be loved when dead." 

6 A solution of continuity is, for instance, a severing of a muscle or a sinew 
by a transverse cut. 

7 " Behold, he is in the desert." 

8 •• Behold, he is in the secret chambers." 



5 66 BACOK. 

Christ in the conventicles of heretics, and others in an outward 
face of a church ; that voice had need continually to sound in 
men's ears, rwlite exire, "go not out." The Doctor of the Gen- 
tiles (the propriety of whose vocation 9 drew him to have a spe- 
cial care of those without) saith, " If a heathen come in, and hear 
you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you are 
mad?" and, certainly, it is little better. When atheists and 
profane persons do hear of so many discordant and contrary 
opinions in religion, it doth avert 1 them from the Church, and 
maketh them "to sit down in the chair of the scorners." 

It is but a light thing to be vouched in so serious a matter, but 
yet it expresseth well the deformity : there is a master of scof- 
fing, 2 that in his catalogue of books of a feigned library sets down 
this title of a book, The Morris-Dance of Heretics : 3 for, indeed, 
every sect of them hath a diverse posture, or cringe, by them- 
selves, which cannot but move derision in worldlings and 
depraved politics, 4 who are apt to contemn holy things. 

As for the fruit towards those that are within, it is peace, 
which containeth infinite blessings : it establisheth faith ; it 
kindleth charity ; the outward peace of the Church distilleth 
into peace of conscience, and it turneth the labours of writing 
and reading of controversies into treatises of mortification and 
devotion. 

Concerning the bounds of unity, the true placing of them im- 
porteth exceedingly. 5 There appear to be two extremes ; for to 
certain zealots all speech of pacification is odious. "Is it peace, 
Jehu ? " " What hast thou to do with peace ? turn thee behind 
me." Peace is not the matter, 6 but following and party. Contra- 
riwise, certain Laodiceans and lukewarm persons think they may 
accommodate points of religion by middle ways, and taking part 
of both, and witty 7 reconcilements, as if they would make an ar- 
bitrement between God and man. Both these extremes are to 
be avoided ; which will be done if the league of Christians, 
penned by our Saviour himself, were in the two cross clauses 
thereof soundly and plainly expounded: "He that is not with 

9 That is, the peculiar nature of whose calling. 

1 Avert in the Latin sense of turn away, or repel. 

2 The allusion is to Rabelais, the great French humorist. 

3 This dance, which was originally called the Morisco dance, is supposed to 
have been derived from the Moors of Spain ; the dancers in earlier times black- 
ening their faces to resemble Moors. It was probably a corruption of the an- 
cient Pyrrhic dance, which was performed by men in armour. 

4 Politics was often used for politicians. 

5 To import exceedingly is to be of the utmost importance. 

6 That is, peace is not what they want. 

7 Here witty is ingenious ; and to " accommodate points " is to harmonize 
differences. 



OF UNITY IN KELIGION. 567 

us is against us "; and again, "He that is not against us is with 
us"; that is, if the points fundamental, and of substance in re- 
ligion, were truly discerned, and distinguished from points not 
merely 8 of faith, but of opinion, order, or good intention. This 
is a thing may seem to many a matter trivial, and done already; 
but if it were done less partially, it would be embraced more 
generally. 

Of this I may give only this advice, according to my small 
model. Men ought to take heed of rending God's Church by 
two kinds of controversies: the one is, when the matter of the 
point controverted is too small and light, not worth the heat 
and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction ; for, as it is 
noted by one of the fathers, Christ's coat indeed had no seam, 
but the Church's vesture was of divers colours ; whereupon he 
saith, In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit, 9 — they be two things, 
unity and uniformity: the other is, when the matter of the 
point controverted is great, but it is driven to an over great 
subtilty and obscurity, so that it becometh a thing rather 
ingenious than substantial. A man that is of judgment and 
understanding shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and 
know well within himself that those which so differ mean one 
thing, and yet they themselves would never agree: and if it 
come so to pass in that distance of judgment which is between 
man and man, shall we think that God above, that knows the 
heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their con- 
tradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both? 
The nature of such controversies is excellently expressed by 
St. Paul, in the warning and precept that he giveth concerning 
the same : Devita prof anas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi 
nominis scientice. 1 Men create oppositions which are not, and 
put them into new terms so fixed as, 2 whereas the meaning 
ought to govern the term, the term in effect governeth the 
meaning. There be also two false peaces, or unities: the one, 
when the peace is grounded but upon an implicit ignorance ; 
for all colours will agree in the dark: the other, when it is 
pieced up upon a direct admission of contraries in fundamental 
points ; for truth and falsehood in such things are like the iron 3 

8 Merely in the sense of purely, absolutely ; like the Latin merus. So in Ham- 
let, i., 2 : " Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely." 

9 " In the garment there may be many colours, but let there be no rending 
of it." 

1 "Avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so 
called." 

2 In all such cases, Bacon uses as and that indiscriminately. 

3 Alluding to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which signified the short duration of 
his kingdom. See Daniel, ii., 33. 



568 BACON. 

and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image ; they may 
cleave, but they will not incorporate. 

Concerning the means of procuring unity, men must beware 
that, in the procuring or muniting 4 of religious unity, they do 
not dissolve and deface the laws of charity and of human 
society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual 
and temporal, and both have their due office and place in the 
maintenance of religion: but we may not take up the third 
sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it ; that is, to 
propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to 
force consciences ; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blas- 
phemy, or intermixture of practice against the State ; much 
less to nourish seditions ; to authorize conspiracies and rebel- 
lions ; to put the sword into the people's hands, and the like, 
tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordi- 
nance of God: for this is but to dash the first table against the 
second ; and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that 
they are men. Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of 
Agamemnon, that could endure the sacrificing of his own 
daughter, exclaimed, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorumf 
What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in 
France, or the powder treason of England? 7 He would have 
been seven times more Epicure and atheist than he was ; for as 
the temporal sword is to be drawn with great circumspection in 
cases of religion, so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the 
hands of the common people ; let that be left unto the Ana- 
baptists 8 and other furies. It was great blasphemy, when the 
Devil said, "I will ascend and be like the Highest"; but it is 
greater blasphemy to personate God, and bring Him in saying, 
"I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness"; and what 

4 Muniting is fortifying or strengthening. 

5 " To deeds so dreadful could religion prompt." The poet refers to Aga- 
memnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, with the view of appeasing the 
wrath of Diana. 

6 He alludes to the massacre of the Huguenots, in France, which took place 
on St. Bartholomew's day, August 24, 1572, by the order of Charles IX. and his 
mother, Catherine de Medici. 

7 More generally known as " the Gunpowder Plot." 

8 A set of desperate fanatics who appeared at Munster about 1530. Assum- 
ing a special and conscious indwelling of the Holy Ghost, they of course set 
themselves above all Low, and often plunged into the grossest sensualities and 
cruelties. Hooker aptly says of them, " what strange fantastical opinion soever 
at any time entered into their heads, their use was to think the Spirit taught it 
them." And again: ''These men, in whose mouths at the first sounded noth- 
ing but only mortification of the flesh, were come at the length to think they 
might lawfully have their six or seven wives apiece; they which at the first 
thought judgment and justice itself to be merciless cruelty, accounted at the 
length their own hands sanctified with being embrued in Christian blood." 



OF REVENGE. 569 

is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend to the 
cruel and execrable actions of murdering princes, butchery of 
people, and subversion of States and governments? Surely 
this is to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of 
a dove, in the shape of a vulture or raven ; and to set out of 
the bark of a Christian church a flag of a bark of pirates and 
assassins: therefore it is most necessary that the Church by 
doctrine and decree, princes by their sword, and all learnings, 
both Christian and moral, as by their Mercury rod, 9 do damn, 
and send to Hell for ever those facts and opinions tending to 
the support of the same ; as hath been already in good part 
done. Surely, in councils concerning religion, that counsel of 
the Apostle would be prefixed, Ira hominis non implet justi- 
tiam Dei; 1 and it was a notable observation of a wise father, 
and no less ingenuously confessed, that those which held and 
persuaded pressure of consciences were commonly interested 
therein themselves for their own ends. 



OF EEYENGE. 



Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more Man's na- 
ture runs to, the more ought law to weed it out : for, as for the 
first wrong, it doth but offend the law, but the revenge of that 
wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, 
a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is 
superior ; for it is a prince's part to pardon : and Solomon, I am 
sure, saith, "It is the glory of a man to pass by an offence." 
That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have 
enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they 
do but trifle with themselves that labour- in past matters. There 
is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to 
purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; 
therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself 
better than me ? And if any man should do wrong merely out 
of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which 
prick and scratch because they can do no other. The most tol- 
erable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law 
to remedy; but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as 

9 Alluding to the caduceus, Avith which Mercury, the messenger of the gods, 
summoned the souls of the departed to the infernal regions. 

1 " The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." Observe that 
would here has the sense of should. The auxiliaries could, should, and would 
were often used indiscriminately in Bacon's time. 



570 . BACON 1 . 



there is no law to punish, else a man's enemy is still beforehand, 
and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desir- 
ous the party should know whence it cometh: this is the more 
generous ; for the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing 
the hurt as in making the party repent: but base and crafty 
cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, 
Duke of Florence, 2 had a desperate saying against perfidious or 
neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable. " You 
shall read," saith he, "that we are commanded to forgive our 
enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to forgive 
our friends." But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: 
"Shall we," saith he, "take good at God's hands, and not be 
content to take evil also ? " and so of friends in a proportion. 
This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own 
wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. Public 
revenges 3 are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death 
of Csesar ; 4 for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry 
the Third of Prance; 5 and many more. But in private revenges 
it is not so; nay, rather vindictive persons live the life of witches; 
who, as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate. 6 



id, 



OF ADVERSITY. 



It was a high speech of Seneca, (after the manner of the 
Stoics), that "the good things which belong to prosperity are to 
be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to 
be admired," — Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, adversarwn mi- 
rabilia. Certainly, if miracles be the command over Nature, 
they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his 
than the other, (much too high for a heathen,) "It is true great- 
ness to have in one the fraility of a man, and the security of a 

2 The allusion is to Cosmo de Medici, chief of the Florentine republic, and 
much distinguished as an encourager of literature and art. 

3 By " public revenges," he means punishment awarded by the State with the 
sanction of the laws. 

4 He alludes to the retribution dealt by Augustus and Antony to the mur- 
derers of Julius Caesar, It is related by ancient historians, as a singular fact, 
that not one of them died a natural death. 

5 Henry III. of France was assassinated in 1599 by Jacques Clement, a Jaco- 
bin monk, in the fi-enzy of fanaticism. Although Clement justly suffered pun- 
ishment, the end of this bloodthirsty and bigoted tyrant may be justly deemed 
a retribution dealt by the hand of an offended Providence. 

6 For some excellent remarks on the subject of this Essay, see a passage 
from Burke, page 320 of this volume. 



OP ADVEESITY. 571 

god," — Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem dei. 
This would have done better in poesy, where transcendencies 
are more allowed ; and the poets indeed have been busy with 
it ; for it is in effect the thing which is figured in that strange 
fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without 
mystery; 7 nay, and to have some approach to the state of a 
Christian; "that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prome- 
theus, (by whom human nature is represented,) sailed the length 
of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher," lively describing 
Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh 
through the waves of the world. But, to speak in a mean, 8 the 
virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is 
fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Pros- 
perity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the 
blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and 
the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet, even in the Old 
Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as 
many hearse-like airs 9 as carols ; and the pencil of the Holy 
Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job 
than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many 
fears and distastes ; and adversity is not without comforts and 
hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries, it is more 
pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, 
than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome 
ground : judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the 
pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, 
most fragrant when they are incensed, 1 or crushed : for pros- 
perity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover 
virtue. 

7 Mystery, here is secret meaning ; like the hidden moral of a fable or myth. 

8 " Speaking in a mean " is speaking with moderation. So in one of Words- 
worth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets : " The golden mean and quiet flow of truths that 
soften hatred, temper strife." 

9 Funereal airs. It must be remembered that many of the Psalms of David 
were written by him when persecuted by Saul, as also in the tribulation caused 
by the wicked conduct of his son Absalom. Some of them, too, though called 
" The Psalms of David," were really composed by the Jews in their captivity at 
Babylon; as, for instance, the 137th Psalm, which so beautifully commences, 
" By the waters of Babylon there we sat down." One of them is supposed to 
be the composition of Moses. 

1 Incensed is set on fire or burned. 



572 baccw. 



OF PAKEOTS AND CHILDEEK. 






The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and 
fears ; they cannot utter the one, nor they will not utter the 
other. Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes 
more bitter ; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate 
the remembrance of death. The perpetuity by generation is 
common to beasts ; but memory, merit, and noble works are 
proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works 
and foundations 2 have proceeded from childless men, which 
have sought to express the images of their minds where those of 
their bodies have failed: so the care of posterity is most in them 
that have no posterity. They that are the first raisers of their 
Houses are most indulgent towards their children, beholding 
them as the continuance, not only of their kind, but of their 
work ; and so both children and creatures. 

The difference in affection of parents towards their several 
children is many times unequal, and sometimes unworthy, es- 
pecially in the mother ; as Solomon saith, "A wise son rejoiceth 
the father, but an ungracious son shames the mother." A man 
shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of 
the eldest respected, and the youngest made wantons ; 3 but in 
the midst some that are as it were forgotten, who, many times, 
nevertheless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, in 
allowance towards their children, is a harmful error, makes them 
base, acquaints them with shifts, makes them sort 4 with mean 
company, and makes them surfeit more when they come to 
plenty: and therefore the proof is best 5 when men keep their 
authority towards their children, but not their purse. Men 
have a foolish manner (both parents and schoolmasters and ser- 
vants) in creating and breeding an emulation between brothers 
during childhood, which many times sorteth 6 to discord when 
they are men, and disturbeth families. 7 The Italians make little 

2 Foundations, as the word is here used, are institutions or establishments, 
6iich as hospitals and other charitable endowments. 

3 That is, petted into self-indulgent and petulant triflers. 

4 Sort is consort, or associate. So in Hamlet, ii., 2 : "I will not sort you with 
the rest of my servants." 

5 Proof is sometimes equivalent to fact, instance, or result. Here "the proof 
is best " means it proves, or turns out, best. So in Julius Cazsar, ii., 1 : " 'Tis a 
common proof that lowliness is young ambition's ladder." 

6 Sometimes to sort is to fall out, to happen, to come. So in Much Ado about 
Nothing, v., 4: "I am glad that all things sort so well." 

7 There is much justice in this remark. Children should be taught to do 
what is right for its own sake, and because it is their duty to do so, and not that 
they may have the selfish gratification of obtaining the reward which their com- 



OF MARRIAGE A!NT> SINGLE LIFE. 573 

difference between children and nephews, or near kinsfolk ; but, 
so they be of the lump, they care not, though they pass not 
through their own body; and, to say truth, in nature it is much 
a like matter ; insomuch that we see a nephew sometimes resem- 
bleth an uncle or a kinsman more than his own parent, as the 
blood happens. Let parents choose betimes the vocations and 
courses they mean their children should take, for then they are 
most flexible ; and let them not too much apply themselves to 
the disposition of their children, as thinking they will take best 
to that which they have most mind to. It is true, that if the 
affection or aptness of the children be extraordinary, then it is 
good not to cross it ; but generally the precept is good, Optimum 
elige, suave et facile illudfaciet consuetudo. 8 Younger brothers are 
commonly fortunate, but seldom or never where the elder are 
disinherited. 



OF MAKRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE. 

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to for- 
tune ; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of 
virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest 
merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or 
childless men, which both in affection and means have married 
and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those 
that have children should have greatest care of future times, 
unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. 
Some there are who, though they lead a single life, yet their 
thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times im- 
pertinences ; 9 nay, there are some other that account wife and 
children but as bills of charges ; nay, more, there are some fool- 
ish rich covetous men that take a pride in having no children, 
because 1 they may be thought so much the richer ; for perhaps 
they have heard some talk, " Such an one is a great rich man," 
and another except to it, "Yea, but he hath a great charge of 
children " ; as if. it were an abatement to his riches. But the 
most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in cer- 

panions have failed to secure, and of being led to think themselves superior to 
their companions. 

8 " Select that course of life which is the most advantageous : habit will soon 
render it pleasant and easily endured." 

9 Impertinence in its original sense; things irrelevant. 

1 Because is here equivalent to in order that. So in St. Matthew, xx.,31: 
"And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace." 



574 bacon-. 

tain self-pleasing and humorous 2 minds, which are so sensible of 
every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and 
garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best 
friends, best masters, best servants ; but not always best sub- 
jects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are 
of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen, 3 for 
charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a 
pool. 4 It is indifferent for judges and magistrates ; for if they 
be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse 
than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly, in their 
hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and children ; and I 
think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks maketh the 
vulgar soldier more base. Certainly wife and children are a 
kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they 
be many times more charitable, because their means are less 
exhaust, 5 yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard- 
hearted, (good to make severe inquisitors,) because their tender- 
ness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, 
and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was 
said of Ulysses, Vetulam snam prcetulit immortalitati. 6 Chaste 
women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the 
merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of 
chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her husband 
wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives 
are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old 
men's nurses ; so as a man may have a quarrel 7 to marry when 
he will: but yet he was reputed one of the wise men that made 
answer to the question when a man should marry, "A young 
man not yet, an elder man not at all." It is often seen that bad 
husbands have very good wives ; whether it be that it raiseth 
the price of their husbands' kindness when it comes, or that the 

2 Humorous was much used in the sense of whimsical or crotchety ; governed 
by humours. 

3 Churchman for clergyman ; a frequent usage. So in Shakespeare often. 

4 The meaning is, that, if clergymen have the expenses of a family to sup 
port, they will hardly find means for the exercise of benevolence toward their 
parishioners. 

5 Exhaust for exhausted. Many preterites were formed in like manner. 
Shakespeare abounds in them. Also in the Psalter: "And be ye lift up, ye 
everlasting doors." 

6 " He preferred his aged wife Penelope to immortality." This was when 
Ulysses was entreated by the goddess Calypso to give up all thoughts of return- 
ing to Ithaca, and to remain with her in the enjoyment of immortality. 

7 Quarrel was often equivalent to cause, reason, or excuse. So in Holinshed : 
"He thought he had a good quarrel to attack him." And in Macbeth, iv., 3: 
■' The chance of goodness be like our warranted quarrel " ; that is, " May virtue's, 
chance of success be as good, as well warranted, as our cause is just." 



OF GREAT PLACE. 575 

wives take a pride in their patience : but this never fails, if the 
bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends* 
consent ; for then they will be sure to make good their own 
folly. 



OF GKEAT PLACE 



Mex in great place are thrice servants, — servants of the sove- 
reign or State, servants of fame, and servants of business ; so 
as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their 
actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power 
and to lose liberty ; or to seek power over others, and to lose 
power over a man's self. The rising unto place is laborious, 
and by pains men come to greater pains ; and it is sometimes 
basje, and by indignities 8 men come to dignities. The standing 
is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an 
eclipse, which is a melancholy thing : Cum non sis qui fueris, non 
esse cur velis vivere. 9 Nay, retire men cannot when they would, 
neither will they when it were reason ; but are impatient of pri- 
vateness even in age and sickness, which require the shadow ; x 
like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their street-door, 
though thereby they offer age to scorn. Certainly great persons 
had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves 
happy ; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find 
it : but if they think with themselves what other men think of 
them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they 
are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the 
contrary within ; for they are the first that find their own 
griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults. Cer- 
tainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and 
while they are in the puzzle of business they have no time to 
tend their health either of body or mind. Illi mors gravis incu- 
bat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi. 2 In place there 
is license to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse ; for 
in evil the best condition is not to will, the second not to can. 
But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring ; 
for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men 
are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act ; 

8 Indignities for basenesses or meannesses. 

9 " Since you are not what you were, there is no reason why you should wish 
to live." 

1 Shadow for shade ; that is, retirement. 

2 "Death presses heavily upon him who, too well known to all others, dies 
unknown to himself." 






576 BACOJT. 

and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and 
commanding ground. Merit and good works is the end of man's 
motion, and conscience 3 of the same is the accomplishment of 
man's rest ; for if a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he 
shall likewise be partaker of God's rest : Et conversus Deus, ut 
aspiceret opera, qucefecerunt manus suce, vidit quod omnia essent 
bonanimis ; 4 and then the Sabbath. 

In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best exam- 
ples, for imitation is a globe 5 of precepts ; and after a time set 
before thee thine own example, and examine thyself strictly 
whether thou didst not best at first. Neglect not, also, the ex- 
amples of those that have carried themselves ill in the same 
place ; not to set off thyself by taxing their memory, but to 
direct .thyself what to avoid. Reform, therefore, without bra- 
very 6 or scandal of former times and persons ; but yet set it 
down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow 
them. Eeduce things to the first institution, and observe 
wherein and how they have degenerated ; but yet ask counsel 
of both times, — of the ancient time what is best, and of the 
later time what is fittest. Seek to make thy course regular, 
that men may know beforehand what they may expect ; but be 
not too positive and peremptory; and express thyself well 
when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve the right of thy 
place, but stir not questions of jurisdiction ; and rather assume 
thy right in silence, and de-facto? than voice it with claims and 
challenges. Perserve likewise the rights of inferior places ; 
and think it more honour to direct in chief than to be busy in 
all. Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execu- 
tion of thy place ; and do not drive away such as bring thee 
information as meddlers, but accept of them in good part. 

The vices of authority are chiefly four, — delays, corruption, 
roughness, and facility. 8 For delays, give easy access ; keep 
times appointed ; go through with that which is in hand, and 
interlace not business but of necessity. For corruption, do not 
only bind thine own hands or thy servants' hands from taking, 
but bind the hands of suitors also from offering ; for integrity 

3 Conscience for consciousness. So Hooker : " The reason why the simpler 
sort are moved with authority is the conscience of their own ignorance." 

4 "And God turned to behold the works which his hands had made, and he 
saw that every thing was very good." 

5 Globe for circle. So in Paradise Lost, ii., 512: "Him a globe of fiery sera- 
phim enclosed with bright emblazonry." 

6 Bravery in the sense of bravado or proud defiance. So in Julius Ccesar, v., 
1 : " They come down with fearful bravery, thinking by this face to fasten in our 
thoughts that they have courage." 

7 That is, " as matter of fact," or as a thing of course. 

8 Facility here means easiness of access, or pliability. 



OF GREAT PLACE. 577 

used doth the one, but integrity professed, and with a manifest 
detestation of bribery, doth the other ; and avoid not only the 
fault, but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, and 
changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion 
of corruption: therefore always, when thou changest thine 
opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together 
with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to 
steal it. 9 A servant or a favourite, if he be inward, 1 and no 
other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a 
by-way to close 2 corruption. For roughness, it is a needless 
cause of discontent : severity breedeth fear, but roughness 
breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be 
grave, and not taunting. As for facility, it is worse than bri- 
bery ; for bribes come but now and then ; but if importunity or 
idle respects 3 lead a man, he shall never be without ; as Solo- 
mon saith, "To respect persons is not good ; for such a man will 
transgress for a piece of bread." 

It is most true that was anciently spoken, — "A place showeth 
the man ; " and it showeth some to the better and some to the 
worse. Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset,* saith 
Tacitus of Galba ; but of Yespasian he saith, Solus imperantium, 
Vespasianus mutatus in melius ; 5 though the one was meant of 
sufficiency, the other of manners and affection. It is an assured 
sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom honour amends ; 
for honour is, or should be, the place of virtue ; and as in Nat- 
ure things move violently to their place, and calmly in their 
place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and 
calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair ; and if 
there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is in 
the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. Use the 
memory of thy predecessor fairly and tenderly ; for, if thou dost 
not, it is a debt will sure be paid when thou art gone. If thou 
have colleagues, respect them ; and rather call them when they 
look not for it, than exclude them when they have reason to 
look to be called. Be not too sensible or too remembering of 
thy place in conversation and private answers to suitors ; but 
let it rather be said, "When he sits in place, he is another man." 

9 To steal is to do a thing secretly . So in The Taming of the Shrew, in., 2: 
•' 'Twerc good, methinks, to steal our marriage." 

1 Inward for intimate. So in King Richard the Third, iii., 4: " Who is most 
inward -with the noble duke? " 

2 Close in the sense of secret or hidden ; a frequent usage. 

3 Resjiects for considerations ; also a frequent usage. 

4 "All would have agreed in pronouncing him fit to govern, if he had not 
governed." 

5 " Of the emperors, Vespasian alone changed for the better after his acces- 
sion" 



578 bacoi*. 



OF BOLDKESS. 

It is a trivial grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise 
man's consideration. Question was asked of Demosthenes, 
what was the chief part of an orator ? he answered, action : 
what next? action: what next again ? action. He said it that 
knew it best, and had by nature himself no advantage in that 
he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator 
which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player, 
should be placed so high above those other noble parts of in- 
vention, elocution, and the rest ; nay, almost alone, as if it were 
all in all. But the reason is plain. There is in human nature 
generally more of the fool than of the wise ; and therefore 
those faculties by which the foolish part of men's minds is 
taken are most potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness 
in civil business: what first? boldness ; what second and third? 
boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and base- 
ness, far inferior to other parts ; but, nevertheless, it doth fas- 
cinate, and bind hand and foot those that are either shallow in 
judgment or weak in courage, which are the greatest part ; yea, 
and prevaileth with wise men at weak times: therefore we see 
it hath done wonders in popular States, but with senates and 
princes less ; and more, ever upon the first entrance of bold 
persons into action, than soon after ; for boldness is an ill keeper 
of promise. Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural 
body, so are there mountebanks for the politic body, — men that 
undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky in two or 
three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and there- 
fore cannot hold out ; nay, you shall see a bold fellow many 
times do Mahomet's miracle. Mahomet made the people be- 
lieve that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it 
offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people 
assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and 
again ; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit 
abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Ma- 
homet will go to the hill." So these men, when they have 
promised great matters and failed most shamefully, yet (if they 
have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, 
and make a turn, and no more ado. Certainly, to men of great 
judgment, bold persons are a sport to behold ; nay, and to 
the vulgar also boldness hath somewhat of the ridiculous ; for, 
if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great 
boldness is seldom without some absurdity: especially it is a 
sport to see when a bold fellow is out of countenance, for that 
puts his face into a most shrunken and wooden posture, as. 



OF GOODKESS, AND GOODNESS OF NATUEE. 579 

needs it must: for in bashfulness the spirits do a little go and 
come ; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a 
stay ; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the 
game cannot stir: 6 but this last were fitter for a satire than for 
a serious observation. This is well to be weighed, that bold- 
ness is ever blind ; for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences: 
therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution ; so that the right 
use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be 
seconds and under the direction of others ; for in counsel it is 
good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them except 
they be very great. 



OF GOODNESS, AND GOODNESS OF NATTJKE. 

I take goodness in this sense, — the affecting of the weal of 
men, which is that the Grecians call Philanthropic:; and the 
word humanity (as it is used) is a little too light to express it. 
Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclina- 
tion. This, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, is the 
greatest, being the character of the Deity ; and without it man 
is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of 
vermin. Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, 
and admits no excess but error. The desire of power in excess 
caused the angels to fall ; the desire of knowledge in excess 
caused man to fall ; but in charity there is no excess, neither 
can angel or man come in danger by it. The inclination to 
goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man ; insomuch 
that, if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living 
creatures ; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who never- 
theless are kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and birds ; 
insomuch as Busbechius 7 reporteth, a Christian boy in Con- 
stantinople had like to have been stoned for gagging in a wag- 
gishness a long-billed fowl. 8 Errors, indeed, in this virtue, of 

6 Stale-mate was a term in chess ; used when the game was ended by the king 
being alone and unchecked, and then forced into a situation from which he was 
unable to move without going into check. A rather ignominious pi-edicament. 

7 A learned traveller, born in Flanders, in 1522. He was employed by the 
Emperor Ferdinand as ambassador to the Sultan Solyman II. His Letters rela- 
tive to his travels in the East, which are written in Latin, contain much inter- 
esting information. They were the pocket companion of Gibbon. 

8 In this instance the stork or crane was pi-obably protected, not on the 
abstract grounds mentioned in the text, but for reasons of policy and gratitude 
combined. In Eastern climates the cranes and dogs are far more efficacious 
than human agency in removing filth and offal, and thereby diminishing the 
chances of pestilence. Superstition, also, may have formed another motive, as 



580 BACON-. 

goodness or charity, may be committed. The Italians have an 
ungracious proverb, Tanto buon die valniente, — "So good, that he 
is good for nothing"; and one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas 
Machiavel, 9 had the confidence to put in writing, almost in 
plain terms, "That the Christian faith had given up good men 
in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust"; which he 
spake, because, indeed, there was never law, or sect, or opinion 
did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth: 
therefore, to avoid the scandal and the danger both, it is good 
to take knowledge of the errors of a habit so excellent. Seek 
the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or 
fancies ; for that is but facility or softness, which taketh an 
honest mind prisoner. Neither give thou ^Esop's cock a gem, 
who would be better pleased and happier if he had had a 
barley-corn. The example of God teacheth the lesson truly: 
"He sendeth His rain, and niaketh His Sun to shine upon the 
just and the unjust"; but He doth not rain wealth, nor shine 
honour and virtues upon men equally: common benefits are to 
be communicate with all, but peculiar benefits with choice. 
And beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the 
pattern ; for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern, 
the love of our neighbours but the portraiture. "Sell all thou 
hast, and give it to the poor, and follow Me"; but sell not all 
thou hast except thou come and follow Me ; that is, except thou 
have a vocation wherein thou mayest do as much good with 
little means as with great ; for otherwise, in feeding the streams, 
thou driest the fountain. 

Neither is there only a habit of goodness directed by right 
reason ; but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition 
towards it, as, on the other side, there is a natural malignity ; 
for there be that in their nature do not affect the good of oth- 
ers. The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to a crossness, 
or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficileness, 1 or the 
like ; but the deeper sort to envy, and mere mischief. Such 
men, in other men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, and 

we learn that storks were held there in a sort of religious reverence, because 
they were supposed to make every Winter the pilgrimage to Mecca. 

9 Nicolo Machiavelli, a Florentine statesman. He wrote ". Discourses on the 
first Decade of Livy," which were conspicuous for their liberality of sentiment, 
and just and profound reflections. This work Avas succeeded by his famous 
treatise, The Prince, his patron, Cajsar Borgia, being the model of the perfect 
prince there described by him. The whole scope of this work is directed to one 
object — the maintenance of power, however acquired. The word Machiavelism 
has been adopted to denote all that is deformed, insincere, and perfidious in 
politics. He died in 1527. 

1 This hard word comes pretty near meaning unreasonableness, or unper- 
suadableness. 



OF ATHEISM. 581 

are ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that 
licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon 
any thing that is raw ; misanthropi, that make it their practice 
to bring men to the bough, and yet have never a tree for the 
purpose in their gardens, as Timon 2 had. Such dispositions 
are the very errors of human nature, and yet they are the 
fittest timber to make great politics of ; like to knee-timber, 3 
that is good for ships that are ordained to be tossed, but not for 
building houses that shall stand firm. 

The parts and signs of goodness are many. If a man be gra- 
cious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the 
world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, 
but a continent that joins to them : if he be compassionate 
towards the afflictions of others, it shows that his heart is like 
the noble tree that is wounded itself when it gives the balm: 4 
if he easily pardons and remits offences, it shows that his mind 
is planted above injuries, so that he cannot be shot: if he be 
thankful for small benefits, it shows that he weighs men's 
minds, and not their trash: but, above all, if he have St. Paul's 
perfection, that he would wish to be an anathema 5 from Christ 
for the salvation of his brethren, it shows much of a Divine 
nature, and a kind of conformity with Christ himself. 



OF ATHEISM. 



1 had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, 6 and the 
Talmud, 7 and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is 
without a mind ; and therefore God never wrought miracles to 
convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it. It 

2 Timon of Athens, as he is generally called, was surnained the Misanthrope, 
from the hatred which he bore to his fellow-men. Going to the public assembly 
on one occasion, he mounted the Rostrum, and stated that he had a fig-tree on 
which mauy worthy citizens had ended their days by the halter; that he was 
going to cut it down for the purpose of building on the spot, and therefore rec- 
ommended them to avail themselves of it before it was too late. 

3 A piece of timber that has grown crooked, and has been so cut that the 
trunk and branch form an angle. 

4 He probably here refers to the myrrh-tree. Incision is the method usually 
adopted for extracting the resinous juices of trees : as in the india-rubber and 
gutta-percha trees. 

5 A votive, and in the present instance a vicarious offering. He alludes to 
the words of St. Paul in his Second Epistle to Timothy, ii., 10. 

6 The Legend was a collection of miraculous and wonderful 6tories ; so called 
because the book was appointed to be read in churches on certain days. 

7 This is the book that contains the Jewish traditions, and the Rabbinical 
explanations of the law. It is replete with wonderful narratives. 



582 bacon. 



sm, 



is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, 
but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to relig- 
ion ; for, while the mind of man looketh upon second causes 
scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further ; but 
when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked 
together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity : nay, even 
that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demon- 
strate religion ; that is, the school of Leucippus, 8 and Democ- 
ritus, 9 and Epicurus: for it is a thousand times more credible 
that four mutable elements and one immutable fifth essence, 1 
duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of 
infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, 2 should have pro- 
duced this order or beauty without a Divine marshal. The 
Scripture saith, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no 
God"; it is not said, "The fool hath thought in his heart": so 
as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that 3 he would have, 
than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it ; 
for none deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh* 
that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more that 
atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man, than by 
this, that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as 
if they fainted in it within themselves, and would be glad to be 
strengthened by consent of others ; nay, more, you shall have 
atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects ; 
and, which is most of all, you shall have of them that will 
suffer for atheism, and not recant: whereas, if they did truly 
think that there were no such thing as God, why should they 
trouble themselves ? Epicurus is charged, that he did but dis- 

8 A Philosopher of Abdera; the first who taught the system of atoms, which 
was afterwards more fully developed by Democritus and Epicurus. 

9 He was a disciple of the last-named philosopher, and held the same princi- 
ples : he also denied the existence of the soul after death. He is considered to 
have been the parent of experimental Philosophy, and was the first to teach, 
what is now confirmed by science, that the Milky Way is an accumulation of 
stars. 

1 The "four mutable elements" are earth, water, air, and fire, of which all 
visible things were thought to be composed. The " fifth essence," commonly 
called quintessence, was an immaterial principle, superior to the four elements; 
a spirit-power. 

2 The Epicureans held that the Universe consisted, originally, of atoms dif- 
fused chaotically through space, and that, after infinite trials and encounters, 
without any counsel or design, these did at last, by a lucky chance, "entangle 
and settle themselves in this beautiful and regular frame of the Avorld which we 
now see." In other Avords, that old chaos grew into the present order by a for- 
tuitous concourse of those atoms. 

3 Here that is equivalent to the compound relative what, that which. The 
usage was very common. 

4 That is, whose ends it serves, or whose interest it ia. 



OP ATHEISM. 583 

semble for his credit's sake, when he affirmed there were 
blessed natures, but such as enjoyed themselves without hav- 
ing respect to the government of the world ; wherein they say 
he did temporize, though in secret he thought there was no 
God: but certainly he is traduced, for his words are noble and 
divine : Non Deos vulgi negare profanum; sed vulgi opiniones Diis 
applicare profanum. 5 Plato could have said no more ; and, 
although he had the confidence to deny the administration, he 
had not the power to deny the nature. The Indians of the 
West have names for their particular gods, though they have 
no name for God: as if the heathens should have had the 
names Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, &c, but not the word Dews: which 
shows that even those barbarous people have the notion, 
though they have not the latitude and extent of it ; so that 
against atheists the very savages take part with the very sub- 
tlest philosophers. The contemplative atheist is rare,— a Di- 
agoras, a Bion, a Lucian, perhaps, and some others: and yet 
they seem to be more than they are ; for that all that impugn 
a received religion, or superstition, are, by the adverse part, 
branded with the name of atheists: but the great atheists in- 
deed are hypocrites, which are ever handling holy things, but 
without feeling ; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end. 
The causes of atheism are, divisions in religion, if there be 
many ; for any one main division addeth zeal to both sides, but 
many divisions introduce atheism: another is, scandal of priests, 
when it is come to that which St. Bernard saith, Non est jam di- 
cere, ut populus, sic sacerdos; quia nee sic populus, ut sacerdos: 6 
a third is, custom of profane scoffing in holy matters, which 
doth by little and little deface the reverence of religion: and 
lastly, learned times, especially with peace and prosperity ; for 
troubles and adversities do more bow men's minds to religion. 
They that deny a God destroy man's nobility ; for certainly 
man is of kin to the beasts by his body ; and, if he be not of kin 
to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It de- 
stroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature ; 
for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and 
courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a 

5 "It is not profane to deny the gods of the common people; hut to apply to 
the gods the notions of the common people, is profane." 

6 u It is not now to he said, As the people so the priest, for the people are 
not so bad as the priests."— St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, founded a hundred 
and sixty convents, and died in 1153, He was unsparing in his censures of the 
priests of his time. Gibbon speaks of him as follows : « Princes and pontiffs 
trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures: France, England, and 
Milan consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the Church : the debt 
was repayed by the gratitude of Innocent the Second; and his successor, Eu- 
genius the Third, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard." 



584 BACOtf. 

man, who to him is instead of a God, or melior natura ; 7 which 
courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that con- 
fidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So 
man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divine pro- 
tection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human 
nature in itself could not obtain ; therefore, as atheism is in all 
respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of 
the means to exalt itself above human frailty. As it is in partic- 
ular persons, so it is in nations: never was there such a state for 
magnanimity as Rome. Of this state hear what Cicero saith : 
Quam volurnus, licet, Patres conscripti, nos amemus, tamen nee num- 
ero Hispanos, nee robore Gallos, nee calliditate Pcenos, nee artibus 
Grczcos, nee denique hoc ipso hujus gentis et terrce domestico natu 
voque sensu Italos ipsos et Latinos; sed pietate, ac religione, atque 
hac una sapientia, quod Deorum immortalium numine omnia regi, 
gubernarique perspeximus, omnes gentes nationesque superavimus. 8 



OF SUPERSTITION. 






It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an 
opinion as is unworthy of Him ; for the one is unbelief, the 
other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach 
of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: "Surely," 
said he, "I had rather a great deal men should say there was 
no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that 
there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as 
they were born" ; as the poets speak of Saturn: 9 and as the 
contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater 
towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, 
to natural piety, to laws, to reputation ; all which may be guides 
to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not ; but su- 
perstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute mon- 
archy in the minds of men: therefore atheism did never perturb 

7 That is, " a superior nature." 

8 " Let us be as partial to ourselves as we will, Conscript Fathers, yet we have 
not surpassed the Spaniards in number, nor the Gauls in strength, nor the 
Carthaginians in cunning, nor the Greeks in the arts, nor, lastly, the Latins and 
Italians of this nation and land, in natural intelligence about home-affairs ; but 
we have excelled all nations and people in piety and religion, and in this one 
wisdom of fully recognizing that all things are ordered and governed by the 
power of the immortal gods." 

9 Time was personified in Saturn, and by this story was meant its tendency 
to destroy whatever it has brought into existence. 



OF SUPERSTITIOK. 585 

States ; 1 for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no 
further. And we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time 
of Augustus Caesar) were civil times ; 2 but superstition hath 
been the confusion of many States, and bringeth in a new 
primum mobile, 3 that ravisheth all the spheres of government. 
The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition 
wise men follow fools ; and arguments are fitted to practice in 
a reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates 
in the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of the schoolmen 
bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, 
which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, 4 and such engines of 
orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no 
such things ; and, in like manner, that the schoolmen had 
framed a number of subtile and intricate axioms and theorems, 
to save the practice of the Church. 

The causes of superstition are, pleasing and sensual rites and 
ceremonies ; excess of outward and Pharisaical holiness ; over- 
great reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the Church ; 
the stratagems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre ; 
the favouring too much of good intentions, which openeth the 
gate to conceits and novelties ; the taking an aim at Divine 
matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imagi- 
nations ; and, lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with 
calamities and disasters. Superstition, without a veil, is a de- 
formed thing ; for as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like 
a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the 
more deformed ; and as wholesome meat corrupteth to little 
worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty 
observances. There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, 
when men think to do best if they go farthest from the super- 
stition formerly received ; 5 therefore care would 6 be had that 
(as it f areth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the 
bad, which commonly is done when the people is the reformer. 

1 Bacon would hardly have -written this passage, had he lived after the 
French Revolution. See some of the pieces from Burke in this volume; es- 
pecially that on page 296. 

2 And yet in those very times human society was, through sheer profligacy, 
going to ruin faster in Rome, was rotting inwards more deeply, than it has 
ever done in any modern nation. 

3 In the astronomical language of Bacon's time, primum mobile meant a body 
drawing all others into its own sphere. 

4 An epicycle is a smaller circle, whose centre is in the circumference of a 
greater one. 

5 So, for example, in Bacon's time, there was a class of people who had a 
superstitious dread of such things as the ring in marriage, and kneeling at the 
Lord's Supper. 

6 Would for should. See page 569, note 1. 



586 bacon. 



OF TKAYEL. 

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education ; in the 
elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country 
before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, 
and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor or 
grave servant, I allow 7 well ; so that he be such a one that hath 
the language, and hath been in the country before ; whereby 
he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen 
in the country where they go, what acquaintances they are 
to seek, what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth ; for 
else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It is a 
strange thing that, in sea- voyages, where there is nothing to be 
seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries ; but in land- 
travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part 
they omit it ; as if chance were fitter to be registered than ob- 
servation : let diaries, therefore, be brought in use. The things 
to be seen and observed are, the Courts of princes, especially 
when they give audience to ambassadors ; the courts of justice, 
while they sit and hear causes ; and so of consistories ecclesi- 
astic ; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which 
are therein extant ; the walls and fortifications of cities and 
towns ; and so the havens and harbours, antiquities and ruins, 
libraries, colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are ; 
shipping and navies ; houses and gardens of state and pleasure 
near great cities ; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, 
bourses, 8 warehouses, exercises of horsemanship, fencing, train- 
ing of soldiers, and the like ; comedies, such whereunto the 
better sort of persons do resort ; treasuries of jewels and robes ; 
cabinets and rarities ; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memora- 
ble in the places where they go ; after all which the tutors or 
servants ought to make diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, 9 
masques, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such 
shows, men need not to be put in mind of them ; yet they are 
not to be neglected. If you will have a young man to put his 
travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much, this 
you must do: first, as was said, he must have some entrance 
into the language before he goeth ; then he must have such a 
servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country, as was likewise said: 
let him carry with him also some card, or book, describing the 

7 Approve is the old meaning of allow. Often so in Shakespeare. Also in the 
Psalms : " The Lord alloweth the righteous." 

8 Bourse is French for purse ; and the sign of a purse was anciently set over 
the places where merchants met. 

9 Public shows of any kind were often called triumphs. 



OF WISDOM FOE A MAN'S SELF. 587 

country where he travelleth, which will be a good key to his 
inquiry ; let him keep also a diary ; let him not stay long in one 
city or town, more or less as the place deserveth, but not long ; 
nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his 
lodging from one end and part of the town to another, which is 
a great adamant 1 of acquaintance ; let him sequester himself 
from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places 
where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth ; 
let him, upon his removes from one place to another, procure 
recommendation to some person of quality residing in the place 
whither he removeth, that he may use his favour in those things 
he desireth to see or know ; thus he may abridge his travel with 
much profit. 

As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that 
which is most of all profitable is acquaintance with the secreta- 
ries and employed men 2 of ambassadors; for so in travelling in 
one country he shall suck the experience of many. Let him 
also see and visit eminent persons in all kinds, which are of great 
name abroad, that he may be able to tell how the life agreeth 
with the fame: for quarrels, they are with care and discretion 
to be avoided ; they are commonly for mistresses, healths, 3 place, 
and words: and let a man beware how he keepeth company with 
choleric and quarrelsome persons ; for they will engage him into 
their own quarrels. When a traveller returneth home, let him 
not leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether be- 
hind him, but maintain a correspondence by letters with those 
of his acquaintance which are of most worth ; and let his travel 
appear rather in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture ; 
and in his discourse let him be rather advised 4 in his answers 
than forward to tell stories : and let it appear that he doth not 
change his country manners for those of foreign parts ; but only 
prick in some flowers of that he hath learned abroad into the 
customs of his own country 



OF WISDOM FOR A MAN'S SELF. 

An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd 5 thing 
in an orchard or garden: and certainly men that are great lovers 

1 Adamant is the old name for the loadstone. 

2 What are now called attaches. 

3 He probably means the refusing to join on the occasion of drinking healths 
when taking wine. 

4 Advised is circumspect, deliberate. Often so in Shakespeare. 

5 Shrewd, here, is ill or mischievous. So in King Henry the Eighth, v., 2 : 
" Do my Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and he is your friend for ever." 



588 bacon - . 

of themselves waste the public. Divide with reason between 
self-love and society ; and be so true to thyself as thou be not 
false to others, specially to thy king and country. It is a poor 
centre of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth ; for that 
only stands fast upon his own centre ; 6 whereas all things that 
have affinity with the heavens, move upon the centre of another, 
which they benefit. The referring of all to a man's self is more 
tolerable in a sovereign prince, because themselves are not only 
themselves, but their good and evil is at the peril of the public 
fortune : but it is a desperate evil in a servant to a prince, or a 
citizen in a republic ; for whatsoever affairs pass such a man's 
hands, he crooketh them to his own ends, which must needs be 
often eccentric to the ends of his master or State : therefore let 
princes or States choose such servants as have not this mark, 
except they mean their service should be made but the acces- 
sary. That which maketh the effect more pernicious is, that all 
proportion is lost. It were disproportion enough for the ser- 
vant's good to be preferred before the master's ; but yet it is a 
greater extreme, when a little good of the servant shall carry 
things against a great good of the master's: and yet that is the 
case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other 
false and corrupt servants ; which set a bias upon their bowl, 7 
of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their 
master's great and important affairs. And, for the most part, 
the good such servants receive is after the model of their own 
fortune ; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model 
of their master's fortune. And certainly it is the nature of ex- 
treme self-lovers, as they will set a house on fire, an 8 it were 
but to roast their eggs: and yet these men many times hold 
credit with their masters because their study is but to please 
them, and profit themselves ; and for either respect they will 
abandon the good of their affairs. 

Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a 
depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to 
leave a house somewhat before it fall : it is the wisdom of the 
fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for 
him: it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they 
would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that 
those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are sui amantes, sine 

6 Bacon adhered to the old astronomy, which made the Earth the centre of 
the system. The Copernican system was not generally received in England till 
many years later. 

7 A bias is, properly, a weight placed in one side of a bowl, which deflects it 
from the straight line. 

8 An, for if, occurs continually in Shakespeare. 



OF IK^OVATIO^S. 589 

rivali, 9 are many times unfortunate ; and whereas they have all 
their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end 
themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings 
they thought by their self -wisdom to have pinioned. 



OF INNOVATIONS. 



As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are 
all innovations, which are the births of time ; yet, notwithstand- 
ing, as those that first bring honour into their family are com- 
monly more worthy than most that succeed, so the first precedent 
(if it be good) is seldom attained by imitation: for ill, to man's 
nature as it stands perverted, hath a natural motion strongest in 
continuance ; but good, as a forced motion, strongest at first. 
Surely every medicine x is an innovation ; and he that will not 
apply new remedies must expect new evils: for time is the 
greatest innovator ; and if time of course alter things to the 
worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the bet- 
ter, what shall be the end ? It is true that what is settled by 
custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit ; and those 
things which have long gone together are, as it were, confeder- 
ate within themselves: whereas new things piece not so well 
but, though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their 
inconformity ; besides, they are like strangers, more admired, 
and less favoured. All this is true, if time stood still ; which, 
contrariwise, moveth so round, 2 that a fro ward retention of 
custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation ; and they that 
reverence too much old times are but a scorn to the new. It 
were good, therefore, that men in their innovations would follow 
the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but 
quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived ; for, otherwise, 
whatsoever is new is unlooked for ; and ever it mends some, and 
pairs 3 other ; and he that is holpen 4 takes it for a fortune, and 

9 «' Lovers of themselves, without a competitor." 

1 Medicine and remedy arc here used as synonymous. 

2 Bound, as applied to speech or action, means plain, bold, downright, de. 
cided. So Polonius, in Hamlet, says, " I went round to work." But the word 
sometimes appears to have the sense of rapid. And so Addison seems to use 
it: " Sir Roger heard them on a round trot"; though here it may very well 
mean downright or decided. 

3 To pair is, properly, to make less or worse. So the Earl of Somerset to 
King James : " 1 only cleave to that which is so little, as that it will suffer no 
pairing or diminution." The word has long been out of use except in impair. 

4 Holpen, or holp, is the old preterite o£help. Used continually in the Psal- 
ter; often in Shakespeare also. 



590 BACOK. 

thanks the time ; and he that is hurt, for a wrong, and imputeth 
it to the author. It is good also not to try experiments in States, 
except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident ; and well 
to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, 
and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation: 5 
and lastly, that the novelty, though it be not rejected, yet be 
held for a suspect ; 6 and, as the Scripture saith, " That we make 
a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us, and dis- 
cover what is the straight and right way, and so to walk in it." 




OF SEEMING WISE. 

It hath been an opinion, that the French are wiser than they 
seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are ; but, how- 
soever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and 
man ; for, as the apostle saith of godliness, "Having a show of 
godliness, but denying the power thereof" ; so certainly there 
are, in points of wisdom and sufficiency, 7 that do nothing or 
little very solemnly ; magno conatu nugas. 8 It is a ridiculous 
thing, and fit for a satire to persons of judgment, to see what 
shifts these formalists have, and what prospectives 9 to make 
superficies to seem body, that hath depth and bulk. Some are 
so close and reserved, as they will not show their wares but by 
a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat ; and 
when they know within themselves they speak of that they do 
not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of 
that which they may not well speak. Some help themselves 
with countenance and gesture, and are wise by signs ; as Cicero 
saith of Piso, that when he answered him he fetched one of his 
brows up to his forehead, and bent the other down to his chin ; 
JRespondes, altero ad frontem sublato, altero ad menlum depresso 
supercilio, crudelitatem tibi non placere. 1 Some think to bear it 

5 For some capital observations on this subject, see, among the pieces from 
Burke, page 213; also, pages 257—259. 

C "Held for a suspect" of course means the same as "held in suspicion." 
Shakespeare has a like usage repeatedly. So in The Comedy of Errors, iii., 1: 
" You draw within the compass of suspect th' unviolated honour of your wife." 

7 Sufficiency appears to be used here in the sense of authority, or full power. 
So Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure, i., 1: "Then no more remains but 
t' add sufficiency, as your worth is able, and let them work." 

8 " Achieve nothing with a mighty effort." 

Prospective is an old term for a perspective glass. So Daniel, as quoted by 
Nares : " Take here this prospective, and therein note and tell what thou seest, 
for well maycst thou there observe their shadows." Through such prospectives 
tilings were "often made to seem very different from what they really were. 

1 " With one brow raised to your forehead, the other bent downward to your 
chin, you answer that cruelty delights you not." 



OF FRIENDSHIP. 591 

by speaking a great word, and being peremptory ; and go on, 
and take by admittance that which they cannot make good. 
Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise, 
or make light of it, as impertinent or curious; 2 and so would 
have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never without 
a difference, 3 and commonly, by amusing men with a subtilty, 
blanch 4 the matter ; of whom A. Gellius saith, Hominem delirum, 
qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera? Of which kind 
also Plato, in his Protagoras, bringeth in Prodicus in scorn, and 
maketh him make a speech that consisteth of distinctions from 
the beginning to the end. Generally, such men, in all delibera- 
tions, find ease to be of the negative side, and affect a credit to 
object and foretell difficulties ; for, when propositions are de- 
nied, there is an end of them ; but if they be allowed, it requir- 
eth a new work ; which false point of wisdom is the bane of 
business. To conclude, there is no decaying merchant, or in- 
ward beggar, 6 hath so many tricks to uphold the credit of their 
wealth as these empty persons have to maintain the credit of 
their sufficiency. Seeming wise men may make shift to get 
opinion ; but let no man choose them for employment ; for, 
certainly, you were better take for business a man somewhat 
absurd than over-formal. 



OF FRIENDSHIP. 



It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth 
and untruth together in few words than in that speech, "Who- 
soever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god " : 7 
for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aver- 
sation towards 8 society in any man hath somewhat of the 
savage beast ; but it is most untrue that it should have any 
character at all of the Divine nature, except it proceed, not out 
of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to seques- 

2 Impertinent is irrelevant ; and curious is over-nice. 

3 Difference in the sense of subtile distinction. 

4 Blanch, here, is evade or elude. So Bacon, again, in his Henry the Seventh : 
"The judges of that time thought it was a dangerous thing to admit ifs and ans 
to qualify the words of treason, whereby every man might express his malice; 
and blanch his danger." So too in Reliquias Wattonianai : " I suppose you will 
not blanch Paris in your way." 

5 "A foolish man, who fritters away weighty matters by fine-spun trifling 
With words." 

6 One really insolvent, though to the world he does not appear so. 

7 The quotation is from Aristotle's Ethics. 

8 A versation towards is the same as aversion to. 



592 BACOH. 

ter a man's self for a higher conversation ; such as is found to 
have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, — as 
Epimenides, the Candian ; Numa, the Boman ; Empedocles, 
the Sicilian ; and Apollonius, of Tyana ; 9 and truly and really in 
divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. 
But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it ex- 
tendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a 
gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there 
is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: Magna 
civitas, magna solitudo; l because in a great town friends are 
scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most 
part, which is in less neighbourhoods: but we may go further, 
and affirm most truly, that it is a mere 2 and miserable solitude 
to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilder- 
ness ; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the 
frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he 
taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. 

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of 
the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all 
kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings 
and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body ; and it is 
not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza 3 to open 
the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the 
lungs, castoreum for the brain ; but no receipt openeth the 
heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, 
fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon 
the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. 

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings 
and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we 
speak ; so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard 
of their own safety and greatness : for princes, in regard of the 
distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and ser- 
vants, cannot gather this fruit, except, to make themselves 
capable thereof, they raise some persons to be as it were com- 
panions, and almost equals to themselves, which many times 
sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such 

9 Epimenides, a poet of Crete, is said to have fallen into a sleep which lasted 
fifty-seven years. He was also said to have lived 299 years. Numa pretended 
that he was instructed in the art of legislation by the divine nymph Egeria, who 
dwelt in the Arician grove. Empedocles, the Sicilian philosopher, declared 
himself to be immortal, and to be able to cure all evils : he is said by some to 
have retired from society, that his death might not be known. Apollonius, of 
Tyana, the Pythagorean philosopher, pretended to miraculous powers, and 
after his death a temple was erected to him at that place. 

1 "A great city is a great desert." 

2 Mere, again, for absolute or utter. See page 567, note 8. 

3 Sarza is the old name for sarsaparilla. 



OF FRIENDSHIP. 593 

persons the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were mat- 
ter of grace or conversation ; but the Eoman name attaineth 
the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum ; 
for it is that which tieth the knot: and we see plainly that this 
hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but 
by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have 
oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom 
both themselves have called friends, and allowed others like- 
wise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is 
received between private men. 

L. Sulla, when he commanded Eome, raised Pompey (after 
surnamed The Great) to that height that Pompey vaunted him- 
self for Sulla's overmatch ; for when he had carried the Consul- 
ship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sulla, and that 
Sulla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pom- 
pey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet, 
for that more men adored the Sun rising than the Sun setting. 
With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, 
as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after 
his nephew ; and this was the man that had power with him to 
draw him forth to his death: for when Caesar would have dis- 
charged the Senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially 
a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm 
out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the 
Senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream: and it seemed 
his favour was so great, as Antonius, in a letter which is re- 
cited verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him venejica, 
"witch"; as if he had enchanted Csesar. Augustus raised 
Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height, as, when he con- 
sulted with Maecenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, 
Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either marry 
his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life ; there was no 
third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Caesar, 
Sejanus had ascended to that height, as they two were termed 
and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius, in a letter to him, 
saith, Hcec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi ; 4 and the whole 
Senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in 
respect of the great clearness of friendship between them two. 
The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plautia- 
nus ; for he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plau- 
tianus, and would often maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to 
his son ; and did write also, in a letter to the Senate, by these 
words: "I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me." 
Now, if these princes had been as a Trajan or a Marcus Aure- 

4 "On account of our friendship, I have not concealed these things." 



594 BACOK. 

lius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an 
abundant goodness of nature ; but being men so wise, of such 
strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of them- 
selves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they 
found their own felicity, though as great as ever happened to 
mortal men, but as an half-piece, except they might have a 
friend to make it entire: and yet, which is more, they were 
princes that had wives, sons, nephews ; yet all these could not 
supply the comfort of friendship. 

It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of his first 
master, Duke Charles the Hardy, 5 namely, that he would com- 
municate his secrets with none ; and, least of all, those secrets 
which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on and saith, 
that towards his latter time that closeness did impair and a little 
perish 6 his understanding. Surely Comineus might have made 
the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second 
master, Louis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his 
tormentor. The parable 7 of Pythagoras is dark, but true, Cor 
ne edito, "Eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give it 
a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto 
are cannibals of their own hearts: but one thing is most admir- 
able, (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship,) 
which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend 
works two contrary effects ; for it redouble th joys, and cutteth 
griefs in halves: for there is no man that imparteth his joys to 
his friend, but he joyeth the more ; and no man that imparteth 
his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, 
in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue as the 
alchymists used to attribute to their stone for man's body, that 
it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit 
of nature. But yet, without praying in aid 8 of alchymists, 
there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of 
Nature ; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any 
natural action ; and, on the other side, weaken eth and dulleth 
any violent impression ; and even so is it of 9 minds. 

5 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the antagonist of Louis XI. of France. 
Comines spent his early yeai'S at his Court, but afterwards passed into the ser- 
vice of Louis XI. This monarch was notorious for his cruelty, treachery, and 
dissimulation. 

G The use of perish as a transitive verb is not peculiar to Bacon. Beaumont 
and Fletcher have it in The Maid's Tragedy, iv., 1: "Let not my sins p>ertsh 
your noble youth." Also in The Honest Man's Fortune, i., 2: "His wants and 
miseries have perish'd his good face." 

7 Parable and proverb were formerly synonymous. 

8 To pray in aid is an old law phrase for calling one in. to help who has an 
interest in the cause. 

9 O/was, as it still is, often equivalent to in respect of. 



OF FRIENDSHIP. 595 

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for 
the understanding, as the first is for the affections ; for friend- 
ship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and 
tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of 
darkness and confusion, of thoughts. Neither is this to be 
understood only of faithful counsel, which a man receiveth 
from his friend ; but, before you come to that, certain it is 
that, whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his 
wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communi- 
cating and discoursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts 
more easily ; he marshalleth them more orderly ; he seeth how 
they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth 
wiser than himself ; and that more by an hour's discourse than 
by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the 
King of Persia, "That speech was like cloth of arras, opened 
and put abroad j 1 whereby the imagery doth appear in figure ; 
whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs." Neither is this 
second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, re- 
strained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel, 
(they indeed are best,) but even without that a man learneth of 
himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth 
his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a 
man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to 
suffer lfis thoughts to pass in smother. 

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, 
that other point which lieth more open, and falleth within vul- 
gar 2 observation, — which is faithful counsel from a friend. 
Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, "Dry light is ever 
the best"; and certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth 
by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which 
cometh from his own understanding and judgment ; which is 
ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as 
there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend 
giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the 
counsel of a friend and of a flatterer ; for there is no such flat- 
terer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against 
flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is 
of two sorts ; the one concerning manners, the other concerning 
business: for the first, the best preservative to keep the mind 
in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of 
a man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too 

1 That is, like tapestries, opened and spread out. Many of the tapestries or 
hangings formerly used for lining rooms had pictures and sentences embroid- 
ered in them. This is characteristically alluded to by Falstaff in 1 Henry the 
Fourth, iv., 2: " Slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." 

2 Vulgar and common are used interchangeably by old writers. 



596 bacok. 

piercing and corrosive ; reading good books of morality is a 
little flat and dead ; observing our faults in others is sometimes 
improper for our case ; but the best receipt (best, I say, to work 
and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange 
thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities 
many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a 
friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their 
fame and fortune : for, as St. James saith, they are as men 
"that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their 
own shape and favour." As for business, a man may think, if 
he will, that two eyes see no more than one ; or, that a game- 
ster seeth always more than a looker-on ; or, that a man in 
anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty 
letters ; 3 or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the 
arm as upon a rest; and such other fond* and high imagina- 
tions, to think himself all in all: but, when all is done, the help 
of good counsel is that which setteth business straight: and if 
any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by 
pieces ; asking counsel in one business of one man, and in an- 
other business of another man ; it is well, (that is to say, better, 
perhaps, than if he asked none at all,) but he runneth two dan- 
gers,— one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled ; for it is 
a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to 
have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to 
some ends which he hath that giveth it ; the other, that he shall 
have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe, (though with good 
meaning,) and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy ; 
even as if you would call a physician that is thought good for 
the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted 
with your body ; and therefore may put you in a way for a pres- 
ent cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and 
so cure the disease, and kill the patient: but a friend, that is 
wholly acquainted with a man's estate, 6 will beware, by further- 
ing any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconven- 
ience : and therefore rest not upon scattered counsels ; they 
will rather distract and mislead than settle and direct. 

After these two noble fruits of friendship, (peace in the affec- 
tions and support of the judgment,) followeth the last fruit, 
which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels ; I mean 
aid, and bearing a part in ail actions and occasions. Here the 
best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is 

8 He alludes to the recommendation winch moralists have often given, that a 
person in anger should go through the alphabet to himself before he allows 
himself to speak. 

4 Fond is often foolish in old writers. So in Shakespeare, passim. 

5 Estate in the sense of state, that is, condition. Often so. 









OF EXPENSE. 597 

to cast and see how many things there are which a man can not 
do himself ; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech 
of the ancients to say "that a friend is another himself"; for 
that 6 a friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, 
and die many times in desire of some things which they prin- 
cipally take to heart ; the bestowing of a child, the finishing of 
a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest 
almost secure that the care of those things will continue after 
him ; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. 
A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place ; but 
where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to 
him and his deputy ; for he may exercise them by his friend. 
How many things are there, which a man cannot, with any face 
or comeliness, say or do himself I A man can scarce allege his 
own merits, with modesty, much less extol them ; a man cannot 
sometimes brook to supplicate or beg, and a number of the 
like: but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, 
which are blushing in a man's own. So, again, a man's person 
hath many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man 
cannot speak to his son but as a father ; to his wife but as a 
husband ; to his enemy but upon terms : whereas a friend may 
speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth 7 with the per- 
son. But to enumerate these things were endless : I have 
given the rule, where a man can fitly play his own part ; if he 
have not a friend, he may quit the stage. 



OF EXPENSE. 



Eiches are for spending, and spending for honour and good 
actions ; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by 
the worth of the occasion : for voluntary undoing may be as 
well for a man's country as for the kingdom of Heaven ; but 
ordinary expense ought to be limited by a man's estate, and 
governed with such regard, as it be within his compass ; and 
not subject to deceit and abuse of servants ; and ordered to the 
best show, that the bills may be less than the estimation abroad. 
Certainly, if a man will keep but of even hand, 8 his ordinary 
expenses ought to be but to the half of his receipts ; and if he 
think to wax rich, but to the third part. It is no baseness for 
the greatest to descend and look into their own estate. Some 

6 Equivalent to because, or inasmuch as. A very frequent usage. 

7 Here sort is suit or accord. So in King Henry the Fifth, iv., 1, speaking of 
the name Pistol : " It sorts well with your fierceness." 

8 " Of even hand " is equivalent to in an equal balance. 



598 bacou. 

forbear it, not upon negligence alone, but doubting 9 to bring 
themselves into melancholy, in respect they shall find it broken; 
but wounds cannot be cured without searching. He that can- 
not look into his own estate at all had need both choose well 
those whom he employeth, and change them often ; for new 
are more timorous and less subtle. He that can look into his 
estate but seldom, it behoveth him to turn all to certainties. 
A man had need, if he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to 
be as saving again in some other : as, 1 if he be plentiful in diet, 
to be saving in apparel ; if he be plentiful in the hall, to be 
saving in the stable, and the like ; for he that is plentiful in ex- 
penses of all kinds will hardly be preserved from decay. In 
clearing of a man's estate, he may as well hurt himself in being 
too sudden, as in letting it run on too long ; for hasty selling is 
commonly as disadvantageable as interest. Besides, he that 
clears at once will relapse ; for, finding himself out of straits, he 
will revert to his customs ; but he that cleareth by degrees in- 
duceth a habit of frugality, and gaineth as well upon his mind 
as upon his estate. Certainly, who hath a state to repair, may 
not despise small things : and, commonly, it is less dishonour- 
able to abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty gettings. 
A man ought warily to begin charges which, once begun, will 
continue ; but in matters that return not he may be more mag- 
nificent. 



OF SUSPICION. 



Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds,— 
they ever fly by twilight: certainly they are to be repressed, or 
at the least well guarded ; for they cloud the mind, they lose 
friends, and they check 2 with business, whereby business can- 
not go on currently and constantly : they dispose kings to tyr- 
anny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and 
melancholy: they are defects, not in the heart, but in the 
brain ; for they take place in the stoutest natures, as in the 
example of Henry the Seventh of England. There was not a 
more suspicious man nor a more stout:- 3 and in such a composi- 
tion they do small hurt ; for commonly they are not admitted, 
but with examination, whether they be likely or no ; but in 
fearful natures they gain ground too fast. There is nothing 
makes a man suspect much, more than to know little ; and 

9 To doubt was often used in the sense of to fear. 

1 As here has the force of for instance. Often so. 

2 That is, clash, or interfere. 

3 Stout, in old language, is stubborn, or, sometimes, haughty. 



OF DISCOURSE. 599 

therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know 
more, and not to keep their suspicions in smother. What 
would men have ? Do they think those they employ and deal 
with are saints? Do they not think they will have their own 
ends, and be truer to themselves than to them? Therefore 
there is no better way to moderate suspicions, than to account 
upon such suspicions as true, and yet to bridle them as false: 
for so'far a man ought to make use of suspicions as to provide, 
as if that should be true that he suspects, yet it may do him no 
hurt. Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers are but buzzes ; 
but suspicions that are artificially nourished, and put into men's 
heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. Cer- 
tainly, the best mean to clear the way in this same wood of 
suspicions, is frankly to communicate them with the party that 
he suspects: for thereby he shall be sure to know more of the 
truth of them than he did before ; and withal shall make that 
party more circumspect, not to give further cause of suspicion. 
But this would not be done to men of base natures ; for they, 
if they find themselves once suspected, will never be true. The 
Italian says, Sospetto licentia fede ; 4 as if suspicion did give a 
passport to faith ; but it ought rather to kindle it to discharge 
itself. 



OF DISCOURSE. 



Some in their discourse desire rather commendation of wit, in 
being able to hold all arguments, than of judgment, in discern- 
ing what is true ; as if it were a praise to know what might be 
said, and not what should be thought. Some have certain com- 
monplaces and themes wherein they are good, and want variety ; 
which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious, and, when it is 
once perceived, ridiculous. The honourablest part of talk is to 
give the occasion ; and again to moderate and j)ass to somewhat 
else ; for then a man leads the dance. It is good in discourse, and 
speech of conversation, to vary, and intermingle speech of the 
present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of 
questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest ; for it 
is a dull thing to tire, and, as we say now, to jade any thing too 
far. As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be privi- 
leged from it, namely, religion, matters of State, great persons, 
any man's present business of importance, and any case that 
deserveth pity ; yet there be some that think their wits have 
been asleep, except they dart out somewhat that is piquant, and 
to the quick. That is a vein which would be bridled : Parce, puer, 

4 " Suspicion dissolves the obligation to fidelity." 



600 BACON. 

stimulis, et fortius utere loris. 5 And, generally, men ought to find 
the difference between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he 
that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, 
so he had need be afraid of others' memory. He that question- 
eth much shall learn much, and content much, but especially if 
he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he 
asketh ; for he shall give them occasion to please themselves in 
speaking, and himself shall continually gather knowledge : but 
let his questions not be troublesome, for that is fit for a poser ; 6 
and let him be sure to leave other men their turns to speak: 
nay, if there be any that would reign and take up all the time, 
let him find means to take them off, and to bring others on, as 
musicians use to do with those that dance too long galliards. 7 
If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are 
thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know 
that you know not. Speech of a man's self ought to be seldom, 
and well chosen. I knew one was wont to say in scorn, "He 
must needs be a wise man, he speaks so much of himself": and 
there is but one case wherein a man may commend himself 
with good grace, and that is in commending virtue in another, 
especially if it be such a virtue whereunto himself pretendeth. 
Speech of touch 8 towards others should be sparingly used ; for 
discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any 
man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, 
whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in 
his house ; the other would ask of those that had been at the 
other's table, "Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow 
given ? " To which the guest would answer, " Such and such a 
thing passed." The lord would say, "I thought he would mar 
a good dinner." Discretion of speech is more than eloquence ; 
and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than 
to speak in good words, or in good order. A good continued 
speech, without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness ; 
and a good reply, or second speech, without a good settled 
speech, showeth shallowness and weakness. As we see in 
beasts, that those that are weakest in the course, are yet nim- 
blest in the turn ; as it is betwixt the greyhound and the 
hare. To use too many circumstances, ere one come to the 
matter, is wearisome ; to use none at all, is blunt. 

5 " Boy, spare the spur, and more tightly hold the reins." 

6 A poser is one who tests or examines. 

7 The galliard was a sprightly dance much used in Bacon's time. 

8 Personal hits, or glances at particular individuals. 



or riches. 601 



OF KICHES. 

I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue : the 
Roman word is better, impedimenta; for as the baggage is to an 
army, so is riches to virtue ; it cannot be spared nor left behind, 
but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it sometimes 
loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no 
real use, except it be in the distribution ; the rest is but conceit: 
so saith Solomon, " Where much is, there are many to consume 
it ; and what hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes? " 
The personal fruition in any man cannot reach to feel great 
riches: there is a custody of them, or a power of dole and dona- 
tive of them, or a fame of them, but no solid use to the owner. 
Do you not see what feigned prices are set upon little stones 
and rarities? and what works of ostentation are undertaken, 
because 9 there might seem to be some use of great riches? 
But then you will say, they may be of use to buy men out of 
dangers or troubles ; as Solomon saith, "Riches are as a strong- 
hold in the imagination of the rich man " : but this is excellently 
expressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact ; for, 
certainly, great riches have sold more men than they have 
bought out. Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get 
justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave content- 
edly: yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of them ; but 
distinguish, as Cicero saith well of 'Rabirius Posthumus, In 
studio rei amplijicandce appa-rebat, non avaritice prcedam, sed in- 
strumentum bonitati quceri. 1 Hearken also to Solomon, and be- 
ware of hasty gathering of riches: Qui festinat ad divitias, non 
erit insons.' 2 The poets feign, that when Plutus (which is riches) 
is sent from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly ; but when he 
is sent from Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot ; meaning, that 
riches gotten by good means and just labour pace slowly ; but 
when they come by the death of others, (as by the. course of 
inheritance, testaments, and the like,) they come tumbling upon 
a man: but it might be applied likewise to Pluto, taking him 
for the Devil ; for when riches come from the Devil, (as by 
fraud and oppression, and unjust means,) they come upon 
speed. The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul : 
parsimony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent ; for it 
withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity. The 
improvement of the ground is the most natural obtaining of 

9 Here because is in order that. See page 573, note 1. 

1 " In his anxiety to increase his fortune, it was evident that not the gratifi- 
cation of avarice was sought, but the means of doing good." 

2 " He who hastens to riches will not be without guilt." 



602 BACOX. 

riches, for it is our great mother's blessing, the Earth ; but it is 
slow ; and yet, where men of great wealth do stoop to hus- 
bandry, it multiplieth riches exceedingly. I knew a nobleman 
in England that had the greatest audits 3 of any man in my 
time, — a great grazier, a great sheep-master, a great timber- 
man, a great collier, a great corn-man, a great lead-man, and so 
of iron, and a number of the like points of husbandry ; so as the 
earth seemed a sea to him in respect of the perpetual impor- 
tation. It was truly observed by one, that himself "came very 
hardly to a little riches, and very easily to great riches"; for 
when a man's stock is come to that, that he can expect the 
prime of markets, 4 and overcome 5 those bargains which for 
their greatness are few men's money, and be partner in the 
industries of younger men, he cannot but increase mainly. 6 
The gains of ordinary trades and vocations are honest, and 
furthered by two things, chiefly, — by diligence, and by a good 
name for good and fair dealing ; but the gains of bargains are 
of a more doubtful nature, when men shall wait upon others' 
necessity ; broke 7 by servants and instruments to draw them 
on ; put off others cunningly that would be better chapmen, 8 
and the like practices, which are crafty and naught: as»for the 
chopping 9 of bargains, when a man buys not to hold, but to sell 
over again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the 
seller and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, if the 
hands be well chosen that are trusted. Usury is the certainest 
means of gain, though one of the worst ; as that whereby a man 
doth eat his bread, in sudore vultus alieni ; x and, besides, doth 
plough upon Sundays: but yet, certain though it be, it hath 
flaws ; for that the scriveners and brokers do value unsound 

3 Audit here means a rent-roll, or account of income. 

4 That is, wait till the markets are at their best. The use of expect for await 
was common. So in Hebrews, x., 13: " Expecting, till his enemies be made his 
footstool." And in The Merchant of Venice, v., 1: "Sweet soul, let's in, and 
there expect their coming." 

5 Overcome in the sense of overtake, or come upon. 

6 Here mainly is greatly. So in Hamlet, iv., 7 : " As by your safety, greatness, 
wisdom, all things else, you mainly were stirr'd up." 

7 To broke, as the word is here used, is to deal meanly, to pander, or employ 
panders. So in AIVs Well that Ends Well, iii., 5: "He brokes with all that can 
in such a suit corrupt the tender honour of a maid." 

8 Chapmen for purchasers, or traders ; the old meaning of the word. So in 
Troilus and Cressida, iv., 1: " You do as chapmen do, dispraise the thing that 
you desire to buy." 

9 To chop, as the word is here used, is to change, to traffic, as in buying to 
sell again. Hence the phrase "a chopping mind," or "a chopping sea." So 
Dryden, in The Hind and Panther: "Every hour your form is chopped and 
changed, like winds before a storm." 

1 " In the sweat of another's brow." 



OF RICHES. 603 

men to serve their own turn. 2 The fortune in being the first in 
an invention, or in a privilege, doth cause sometimes a wonder- 
ful overgrowth in riches, as it was with the first sugar-man 3 in 
the Canaries : therefore, if a man can play the true logician, to 
have as well judgment as invention, he may do great matters, 
especially if the times be fit. He that resteth upon gains cer- 
tain shall hardly grow to great riches ; and he that puts all 
upon adventures doth oftentimes break and come to poverty: it 
is good, therefore, to guard adventures with certainties that 
may uphold losses. Monopolies, and coemption of wares for 
re-sale, where they are not restrained, are great means to en- 
rich ; especially if the party have intelligence what things are 
like to come into request, and so store himself beforehand. 
Riches gotten by service, though it be of the best rise, yet when 
they are gotten by flattery, feeding humours, and other servile 
conditions, they may be placed amongst the worst. 4 As for 
fishing for testaments and executorships, (as Tacitus saith of 
Seneca, Testamenia et orbos tanquam indagine capi, 6 ) it is yet 
worse, by how much men submit themselves to meaner persons 
than in service. 

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they 
despise them that despair of them ; and none worse when they 
come to them. Be not penny-wise : riches have wings, and 
sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must 
be set flying to bring in more. Men leave their riches either 
to their kindred or to the public ; and moderate portions pros- 
per best in both. A great state left to an heir is as a lure to all 
the birds of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the 
better stablished in years and judgment : likewise, glorious 6 
gifts and foundations are like sacrifices without salt ; and but 
the painted sepulchres of alms, which soon will putrefy and 
corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure not thine advancements 7 
by quantity, but frame them by measure : and defer not char- 
ities till death ; for, certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that 
doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own. 

2 That is, as crafty penmen and panders falsely represent knaves as trust- 
worthy, in order to catch victims. See note 7, just above. 

3 The first planters of the sugar-cane. 

4 This is obscure; but the meaning may come something thus: "Riches 
gotten by service, though the service be of the highest price, or of the most lu- 
crative sort, yet, if it proceed by sinister arts and base compliances, are to be 
reckoned among the worst." This use of rise seems odd, but is the same at 
bottom as in the phrase, " a rise of value," or " a rise of prices." 

5 " Wills and childless parents, taken as with a net." 

6 Glorious in the sense of the Latin gloriosus ; that is, boastful, or ostenta- 
tious. A frequent usage. 

7 Advances ; gifts of money or property. 



604 BACON. 



OF NATURE IN MEN. 

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extin- 
guished. Force maketh nature more violent in the return, 
doctrine and discourse maketh nature less importune, 8 but cus- 
tom only doth alter and subdue nature. He that seeketh vic- 
tory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too 
small tasks ; for the first will make him dejected by often fail- 
ings, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though 
by often prevailings. And, at the first, let him practise with 
helps, as swimmers do with bladders or rushes ; but, after a 
time, let him practise with disadvantages, as dancers do with 
thick shoes; for it breeds great perfection if the practice be 
harder than the use. Where nature is mighty, and therefore 
the victory hard, the degrees had need be, first to stay and ar- 
rest nature in time ; (like to him that would say over the four- 
and-twenty letters when he was angry ;) then to go less in 
quantity ; as if one should, in forbearing wine, come from drink- 
ing healths to a draught* at a meal ; and, lastly, to discontinue 
altogether: but if a man have the fortitude and resolution to 
enfranchise himself at once, that is the best : 

"Optimus ille animi vindex laedentia pectus 
Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel." 9 

Neither is the ancient rule amiss, to bend nature as a wand to 
a contrary extreme, whereby to set it right ; understanding it 
where the contrary extreme is no vice. Let not a man force a 
habit upon himself with a perpetual continuance, but with 
some intermission ; for the pause reinforceth the new onset ; 
and if a man that is not perfect be ever in practice, he shall as 
well practise his errors as his abilities, and induce one habit of 
both ; and there is no means to help this but by seasonable in- 
termissions. But let not a man trust his victory over his nature 
too far, for nature will lie buried a great time, and yet revive 
upon the occasion or temptation ; like as it was with ^Esop's 
damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely 
at the board's end till a mouse ran before her: therefore let a 
man either avoid the occasion altogether, or put himself often 
to it, that he may be little moved with it. A man's nature is 
best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation ; in 
passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts ; and in 
a new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him. They 

8 Importune for importunate ; that is, troublesome. 

9 " He is the best assertor of the soul, who bursts the bonds that gall him, 
and grieves it out at once." The quotation is from Ovid's Remedy for Love. 



OF CUSTOM AND EDUCATION". 605 

are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations ; other- 
wise they may say, Multum incola fuit anima mea, 1 when they 
converse in those things they do not affect. 2 In studies, what- 
soever a man commandeth upon himself, let him set hours for 
it ; but whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no 
care for any set times ; for his thoughts will fly to it of them- 
selves, so as the spaces of other business or studies will suffice. 
A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds ; therefore let 
him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other. 



OF CUSTOM AND EDUCATION. 

Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination; 
their discourse and speeches according to their learning and 
infused opinions ; but their deeds are after 3 as they have been 
accustomed: and therefore, as Machiavel well noteth, (though 
in an evil-favoured instance,) there is no trusting to the force of 
nature, nor to the bravery of words, except it be corroborate by 
custom. His instance is, that, for the achieving of a desperate 
conspiracy, a man should not rest upon the fierceness of any 
man's nature, or his resolute undertakings, but take such a one 
as hath had his hands formerly in blood : but Machiavel knew 
not of a Friar Clement, nor a Eavillac, 4 nor a Jaureguy, 5 nor a 
Baltazar Gerard ; 6 yet his rule holdeth still, that nature, nor 
the engagement of words, are not so forcible as custom. Only 
superstition is now so well advanced, that men in the first blood 
are as firm as butchers by occupation ; and votary resolution 7 
is made equipollent to custom, even in matter of blood. In 
other things, the predominancy of custom is everywhere visi- 
ble, insomuch as a man would wonder to hear men profess, 
protest, engage, give great words, and then do just as they have 
done before, as if they were dead images and engines, moved 
only by the wheels of custom. We see also the reign or tyr- 
anny of custom, what it is. The Indians (I mean the sect of 

1 " My bouI has long been a sojourner." 

2 That is, " when their course of life is in those things which they do not like." 
Here the verb converse has the same sense as the substantive in Philippians, i., 
27: " Let your conversation be as becometh the Gospel of Christ." 

3 A good instance of after used in the sense of according. 

4 The assassin of Henry the Fourth of France, in 1310. 

5 He attempted to assassinate William, Prince of Orange, and wounded him 
severely. Philip the Second, in 1582, set a price upon the Prince's head. 

6 He assassinated the Prince of Orange in 1584; a crime which he is sup- 
posed to have meditated for six years. 

7 A resolution confirmed and consecrated by a solemn vow. 




606 BACON-. 

their wise men) lay themselves quietly upon a stack of wood, 
and so sacrifice themselves by fire : nay, the wives strive to be 
burned with the corpses of their husbands. The lads of Sparta, 
of ancient time, were wont to be scourged upon the altar of 
Diana, without so much as queening. 8 I remember, in the be- 
ginning of Queen Elizabeth's time of England, an Irish rebel, 
condemned, put up a petition to the deputy that he might be 
hanged in a withe, and not in a halter, because it had been so 
used with former rebels. There be monks in Russia for pen- 
ance, that will sit a whole night in a vessel of water, till they be 
engaged with hard ice. 

Many examples may be put of the force of custom, both upon 
mind and body ; therefore, since custom is the principal magis- 
trate of man's life, let men by all means endeavour to obtain 
good customs. Certainly, custom is most perfect when it be- 
ginneth in young years: this we call education, which is, in 
effect, but an early custom. So we see, in languages, the tongue 
is more pliant to all expressions and sounds, the joints are 
more supple to all feats of activity and motions, in youth than 
afterwards ; for it is true, that late learners cannot so well take 
the ply, 9 except it be in some minds that have not suffered 
themselves to fix, but have kept themselves open and prepared 
to receive continual amendment, which is exceeding rare : but 
if the force of custom, simple and separate, be great, the force 
of custom, copulate and conjoined and collegiate, is far greater ; 
for there example teacheth, company comforteth, 1 emulation 
quickeneth, glory raiseth ; so as in such places the force of cus- 
tom is in his 2 exaltation. 3 Certainly, the great multiplication 
of virtues upon human nature resteth upon societies well or- 
dained and disciplined ; for commonwealths and good govern- 
ments do nourish virtue grown, but do not much mend the 
seeds: but the misery is, that the most effectual means are now 
applied to the ends least to be desired. 

8 To quech, or to quick, is an old word for to move, to stir, to flinch. 

9 Ply is bent, turn, or direction. So used by Macaulay : " The Czar's mind 
had taken a strange ply, which it retained to the last." 

1 To comfort is here used in its original sense, to malce strong. So in the 
Litany : " That it may please Thee to comfort and help the weak-hearted." 

2 His for its, referring to custom; its not being then an accepted word. 
Shakespeare and the English Bible are full of like instances; as, "if the salt 
have lost his savour," and " the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind." 

3 Exaltation is here used in its old astrological sense ; a planet being said to 
be in its exaltation when it was in the sign where its influence was supposed to 
be the strongest. 



OF YOUTH AtfD AGE. 607 



OF YOUTH AND AGE. 

A MAisr that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have 
lost no time ; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is 
like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second, for there is 
a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages ; and yet the invention 
of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations 
stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. 
Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires and 
perturbations, are not ripe for action till they have passed the 
meridian of their years ; as it was with Julius Csesar and Septi- 
mius Severus, of the latter of whom it is said, Juventutem egit 
erroribus, imo furoribus plenam ; 4 and yet he was the ablest em- 
peror, almost, of all the list: but reposed natures may do well 
in youth, as it is seen in Augustus Caesar, Cosmos duke of Flor- 
ence, Gaston de Foix, 5 and others. On the other side, heat and 
vivacity in age is an excellent composition for business. Young 
men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than 
for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled busi- 
ness ; for the experience of age, in things that fall within the 
compass of it, directeth them ; but in new things abuseth them. 
The errors of young men are the ruin of business ; but the 
errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have 
been done, or sooner. 

Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace 
more than they can hold ; stir more than they can quiet ; fly 
to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees ; 
pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon, 
absurdly ; care not to innovate, 6 which draws unknown incon- 
veniences ; use extreme remedies at first, and, that which doub- 
leth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them ; like an 
unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age 
object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent 
too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, 
but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly 
it is good to compound employments of both ; for that will be 
good for the present, because the virtues of either age may cor- 
rect the defects of both ; and good for succession, that young 
men may be learners, while men in age are actors ; and, lastly, 
good for extern accidents, because authority f olloweth old men, 

4 " His youth was full of errors, and even of frantic passions." 

5 A nephew of Louis the Twelfth : he commanded the French armies in Italy 
against the Spaniards, and was killed in the battle of Ravenna, in 1512. 

That is, are not cautious in innovating, or are not careful how they inno- 
vate. This use of the infinitive was very common. 



608 baco^-. 

and favour and popularity youth : but, for the moral part, per- 
haps youth will have the preeminence, as age hath for the 
politic. A certain rabbin, upon the text, "Your young men 
shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams," infer- 
reth that young men are admitted nearer to God than old, be- 
cause vision is a clearer revelation than a dream; and, certainly, 
the more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicate th ; 
and age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding than 
in the virtues of the will and affections. There be some have 
an over-early ripeness in their years, which fadeth betimes: 
these are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is 
soon turned ; such as was Hermogenes 7 the rhetorician, whose 
books are exceeding subtile, who afterwards waxed stupid: a 
second sort is of those that have some natural dispositions, 
•which have better grace in youth than in age ; such as is a flu- 
ent and luxuriant speech, which becomes youth well, but not 
age: so Tully saith of Hortensius, Idem manebat, neque idem 
decebat: 8 the third is of such as take too high a strain at the 
first, and are magnanimous more than tract of years can uphold; 
as was Scipio Africanus, of whom Livy saith, in effect, Ultima 
primis cedebant. 9 



I 



OF BEAUTY. 



Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set ; and surely virtue 
is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features, 
and that hath rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect ; 
neither is it almost x seen that very beautiful persons are other- 
wise of great virtue, as if nature were rather busy not to err 
than in labour to produce excellency ; and therefore they prove 
accomplished, but not of great spirit ; and study rather behav- 
iour than virtue. But this holds not always ; for Augustus 
Caesar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, Edward the 
Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the Sophy of 
Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beauti- 
ful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour is more than 
that of colour, and that of decent and gracious 2 motion more 
than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty which 

7 He lived in the second century after Christ, and is said to have lost his 
memory at the age of twenty-five. 

8 [' He remained the same, but the same was no longer becoming to him." 

9 " His last deeds fell short of the first." 

1 Almost, here, has the force of generally. The usage was not uncommon. 

2 Here decent and gracious are becoming and graceful. 



OF DEFORMITY. 609 

a picture cannot express ; no, nor the first sight of the life. 
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in 
the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert 
Purer were the more 3 trifler; whereof the one would make a 
personage by geometrical proportions, the other, by taking the 
best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent. Such per- 
sonages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made 
them ; not but I think a painter may make a better face than 
ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity, (as a musician 
that maketh an excellent air in music,) and not by rule. A man 
shall see faces that, if you examine them part by part, you shall 
find never a good ; and yet all together do well. If it be true 
that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly 
it is no marvel though persons in years seem many times more 
amiable: Pulchrorum autumnus pulcker:* for no youth can be' 
comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make 
up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer-fruits, which are easy 
to corrupt, and cannot last ; and, for the most part, it makes a 
dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance ; but yet 
certainly, again, if it light well, it maketh virtues &hine, and 
vices blush. 



OF DEFOEMITY. 



Deformed persons are commonly even with Nature ; for as 
Nature hath done ill by them, so do they by Nature, being for 
the most part (as the Scripture saith) " void of natural affection" : 
and so they have their revenge of Nature. Certainly there is a 
consent between the body and the mind, and where Nature 
erreth in the one, she ventureth in the other: Ubipeccat in uno, 
periditatur in altero: but, because there is in man an election 
touching the frame of his mind, and a necessity in the frame of 
body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes obscured 
by the Sun of discipline and virtue ; therefore it is good to con- 
sider of deformity, not as a.sign which is more deceivable, 5 but 
as a cause which seldom faileth of the effect. "Whosoever hath 
any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath 
also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself 
from scorn ; therefore all deformed persons are extreme bold ; 

3 More in the sense of greater. So Shakespeare, repeatedly. 

4 " The Autumn of the beautiful is beautiful." 

5 Deceivable for deceptive ; the passive form with the active sense. So in 
King Richard the Second, ii., 3 : " Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee, 
whose duty is deceivable and false. Also, in As You Like It, we have disputable 
for disputatious. 



610 BACOK. 

first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to scorn, but in 
process of time by a general habit. Also it stirreth in them in- 
dustry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the 
weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. 
Again, in their superiors, it quencheth jealousy towards them, 
as persons that they think they may at pleasure despise ; and it 
layeth their competitors and emulators asleep, as never believ- 
ing they should be in possibility of advancement till they see 
them in possession: so that upon the matter, in a great wit, 
deformity is an advantage to rising. Kings in ancient times 
(and at this present in some countries) were wont to put great 
trust in eunuchs, because they that are envious towards all are 
more obnoxious 6 and officious towards one ; but yet their trust 
towards them hath rather been as to good spials and good whis- 
perers than good magistrates and officers ; and much like is the 
reason of deformed persons. Still the ground is, they will, if 
they be of spirit, seek to free themselves from scorn, which 
must be either by virtue or malice ; and therefore let it not be 
marvelled, if sometimes they prove excellent persons ; as was 
Agesilaus, Zanger the son of Solyman, iEsop, Gasca president 
of Peru ; and Socrates may go likewise amongst them, with 
others. 



OF STUDIES. 



Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. 
Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring ; for or- 
nament, is in discourse ; and for ability, is in the judgment and 
disposition of business: for expert men can execute, and per- 
haps judge of particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, 
and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those 
that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth ; 
to use them too much for ornament, is affectation ; to make 
judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar: 
they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience : for natu- 
ral abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study ; 
and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at 
large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men 
contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use 
them ; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom 
without them and above them, won by observation. Read not 
to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, 
nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some 

6 Obnoxious in the Latin sense of submissive or complying. 



OF PRAISE. 611 

books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to 
be chewed and digested ; that is, some books are to be read only 
in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; 7 and some few 
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some 
books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them 
by others ; but that would be only in the less important argu- 
ments, and the meaner sort of books ; else distilled books are, 
like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a 
full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man ; 
and therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great 
memory ; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit ; 
and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem 
to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise ; poets 
witty ; the mathematics subtile ; natural philosophy deep ; 
moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: Abeunt studia 
in mores: 9 nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but 
may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body 
may have appropriate exercises, — bowling is good for the stone 
and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for 
the stomach, riding for the head and the like ; — so, if a man's 
wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics, for in demon- 
strations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin 
again ; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let 
him study the schoolmen, for they are Cymini sectores; 9 if he 
be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to 
prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: 
so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. 



OF PRAISE. 



Praise is the reflection of virtue, but it is as the glass or 
body which giveth the reflection : if it be from the common 
people, it is commonly false and naught, and rather followeth 
vain persons than virtuous ; for the common people understand 
not many excellent virtues: the lowest virtues draw praise from 
them, the middle virtues work in them astonishment or admira- 
tion ; but of the highest virtues they have no sense or perceiv- 
ing at all ; but shows, and species virtutibus similes, 1 serve best 
with them. Certainly fame is like a river, that beareth up things 
light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid ; but if 

7 Curiously in the sense of attentively or inquisitively. 

8 " Studies pass up into manners and habits." 

9 " Splitters of cummin," or, as we now say, «« hair-splitters." 
1 "Appearances resembling virtues." 



612 



BACOK. 



persons of quality and judgment concur, then it is (as the Script- 
ure saith) Nomen bonum instar unguenti fragrantis ; 2 it filleth all 
round about, and will not easily away ; for the odours of oint- 
ments are more durable than those of flowers. 

There be so many false points of praise, that a man may 
justly hold it a suspect. Some praises proceed merely of flat- 
tery ; and if he be an ordinary flatterer, he will have certain 
common attributes, which may serve every man ; if he be a 
cunning flatterer, he will follow the arch-flatterer, which is a 
man's self; and wherein a man thinketh best of himself, 
therein the flatterer will uphold him most: but if he be an im- 
pudent flatterer, look, wherein a man is conscious to himself 
that he is most defective, and is most out of countenance in 
himself, that will the flatterer entitle him to perforce, spreta 
conscientia. 3 Some praises come of good wishes and respects, 
which is a form due in civility to kings and great persons, lau- 
dando prcecipere ; 4 when, by telling men what they are, they 
represent to them what they should be. Some men are praised 
maliciously to their hurt, thereby to stir envy and jealousy 
towards them ; Pesslmum genus inimicorum laudantium ; 5 inso- 
much as it was a proverb amongst the Grecians, that "he that 
was praised to his hurt should have a push 6 rise upon his nose "; 
as we say that a blister will rise upon one's tongue that tells a 
lie. Certainly moderate praise, used with opportunity, and not 
vulgar, is that which doeth the good. Solomon saith, "He that 
praiseth his friend aloud, rising early, it shall be to him no bet- 
ter than a curse." Too much magnifying of man or matter 
doth irritate contradiction, and procure envy and scorn. To 
praise a man's self cannot be decent, except it be in rare cases ; 
but to praise a man's office or profession, he may do it with 
good grace, and with a kind of magnanimity. The Cardinals of 
Koine, which are theologues, and friars, and schoolmen, have 
a phrase of notable contempt and scorn towards civil business ; 
for they call all temporal business of wars, embassages, judi- 
cature, and other employments, sherrerie, which is under- 
sheriffries, as if they were but matters for under-sheriffs and 
catchpoles ; though many times those under-sheriffries do more 
good than their high speculations. St. Paul, when he boasts 
of himself, he doth oft interlace, "I speak like a fool"; but 
speaking of his calling, he saith, Magnijicabo apostolatum mtum. 7 



2 "A good name is like fragrant ointment." 

3 " Conscience being turned out of doors." 

4 " To instruct in the act of praising." 

5 '• Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies." 

6 Push is an old word for a pimple or pustule. 

7 " I will magnify my apostleship." 



OF JUDICATUKE. . 613 



OF JUDICATUBE. 

Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicer e, and 
not jus dare, — to interpret law, and not to make law, or give 
law ; else will it be like the authority claimed by the Church of 
Rome, which, under pretext of exposition of Scripture, doth 
not stick to add and alter, and to pronounce that which they do 
not find, and by show of antiquity to introduce novelty. Judges 
ought to be more learned than witty, more reverend than plau- 
sible, and more advised 8 than confident. Above all things, in- 
tegrity is their portion and proper virtue. " Cursed," saith the 
law, "is he that removeth the landmark." The mislayer of a 
mere stone is to blame ; but it is the unjust judge that is the 
capital remover of landmarks, when he defineth amiss of lands 
and property. One foul sentence doth more hurt than many 
foul examples ; for these do but corrupt the stream, the other 
corrupteth the fountain : so saith Solomon, Fons turbatus et vena 
corrupta est Justus cadens in causa sua coram adversario. 9 

The office of judges may have reference unto the parties that 
sue, unto the advocates that plead, unto the clerks and minis- 
ters of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign or State 
above them. 

First, for the causes or parties that sue. " There be," saith the 
Scripture, "that turn judgment into wormwood" ; and surely 
there be, also, that turn it into vinegar ; for injustice maketh it 
bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal duty of a judge 
is to suppress force and fraud, whereof force is the more perni- 
cious when it is open, and fraud when it is close and disguised. 
Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to be spewed out, 
as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to prepare his way to a 
just sentence, as God useth to prepare His way, by raising val- 
leys and taking down hills: so, when there appeareth on either 
side a high hand, violent prosecution, cunning advantages 
taken, combination, power, great counsel, then is the virtue of 
a judge seen to make inequality equal ; that he may plant his 
judgment as upon an even ground. Quifortiter emungit, elicit 
sanguinem ; x and where the wine-press is hard wrought, it 
yields a harsh wine, that tastes of the grape-stone. Judges 
must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences ; 
for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws : especially, 
in case of laws penal, they ought to have care that that which 

8 Here, again, advised is careful, considerate. See page 587, note 4. 

9 "A righteous man falling in his cause before his adversary is as a troubled 
fountain and a corrupt spring." 

1 " He who wrings the nose hard brings blood." 



C14 BACON". 

was meant for terror be not turned into rigour ; and that they 
bring not upon the people that shower whereof the Scripture 
speaketh, Pluet super eos laqueos ; 2 for penal laws pressed are a 
shower of snares upon the people: therefore let penal laws, if 
they have been sleepers of long, or if they be grown unfit for 
the present time, be by wise judges confined in the execution: 
Judicis officium est, ut res, ita tempora rerum, &c. 3 In causes of 
life and death, judges ought (as far as the law permitteth) in 
justice to remember mercy, and to cast a severe eye upon the 
example, but a merciful eye upon the person. 

Secondly, for the advocates and counsel that plead. Patience 
and gravity of hearing is an essential part of justice ; and an 
over-speaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal. It is no grace to 
a judge first to find that which he might have heard in due 
time from the bar ; or to show quickness of conceit in cutting 
off evidence or counsel too short, or to prevent 4 information by 
questions, though pertinent. The parts of a judge in hearing 
are four, — to direct the evidence ; to moderate length, repeti- 
tion, or impertinency of speech ; to recapitulate, select, and col- 
late the material points of that which hath been said ; and to 
give the rule or sentence. Whatsoever is above these is too 
much, and proceedeth either of glory, 6 and willingness to 
speak, or of impatience to hear, or of shortness of memory, or 
of want of a staid and equal attention. It is a strange thing to 
see that the boldness of advocates should prevail with judges, 
whereas they should imitate God, in whose seat they sit, who 
represseth the presumptuous, and giveth grace 6 to the modest ; 
but it is more strange that judges should have noted favourites, 
which cannot but cause multiplication of fees, and suspicion of 
by-ways. There is due from the judge to the advocate some 
commendation and gracing, where causes are w T ell handled and 
fair pleaded, especially towards the side which obtaineth not ; 
for that upholds in the client the reputation of his counsel, and 
beats down in him the conceit of his cause. 7 There is likewise 
due to the public a civil reprehension of advocates, where 
there appeareth cunning counsel, gross neglect, slight informa- 

2 " He will rain snares upon them." 

3 " It is the duty of a judge to consider not only the facts but the circum- 
stances of the case." 

4 Prevent in its old sense of anticipate or forestall. 

5 Glory here is vain-glory ; that is vaunting or display. See page 603, note 6. 

6 Grace in the sense of favour. So in St. James, iv., 6: "God resisteth the 
proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." 

7 That is, abates his confidence in the goodness of his cause. Conceit for 
opinion. So in King ITenry the Eighth, ii., 3 : "I shall not fail to approve the fair 
conceit the King hath of you." Also in the Scripture saying : " Seest thou a man 
wise in his own conceit f " 



f 

OF JUDICATURE. 615 

lion, indiscreet pressing, or an over-bold defence. And let not 
the counsel at the bar chop 8 with the judge, nor wind himself 
into the handling of the cause anew after the judge hath de- 
clared his sentence ; but, on the other side, let not the judge 
meet the cause half way, nor give occasion to the party to say 
his counsel or proofs were not heard. 

Thirdly, for that that concerns clerks and ministers. The 
place of justice is a hallowed place ; and therefore not only the 
bench, but the footpace 9 and precincts and purprise 1 thereof 
ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption ; for, cer- 
tainly, "Grapes," as the Scripture saith, "will not be gathered 
of thorns or thistles" ; neither can justice yield her fruit with 
sweetness amongst the briars and brambles of catching and 
polling 2 clerks and ministers. The attendance of courts is sub- 
ject to four bad instruments: first, certain persons that are 
sowers of suits, which make the court swell, and the country 
pine: the second sort is of those that engage courts in quarrels 
of jurisdiction, and are not truly amid curice, but parasiti curice, 3 
in puffing a court up beyond her bounds for their own scraps 
and advantage : the third sort is of those that may be accounted 
the left hands of courts ; persons that are full of nimble and 
sinister tricks and shifts, whereby they pervert the plain and 
direct courses of courts, and bring justice into oblique lines and 
labyrinths : and the fourth is the poller and exacter of fees ; 
which justifies the common resemblance of the courts of jus- 
tice to the bush whereunto while the sheep flies for defence in 
weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece. On the other side, 
an ancient clerk, skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, and 
understanding in the business of the court, is an excellent fin- 
ger of a court, and doth many times point the way to the judge 
himself. 

Fourthly, for that which may concern the sovereign and Es- 
tate. Judges ought, above all, to remember the conclusion of 
the Koman Twelve Tables, Salus populi suprema lex ; 4 and to 
know that laws, except they be in order to that end, are but 
things captious, and oracles not well inspired : therefore it is a 

8 To chop, here, is to bandy words. See page 602, note 9. 

9 The footpace is what we call the lobby. 

1 The purprise is the enclosure. So in Holland's Plutarch : " Their wives and 
children were to assemble all together unto a certain place in Phocis, and en- 
viron the whole purprise and precinct thereof with a huge quantity of wood." 

2 To poll is an old word for to pillage, to plunder. Poller, a little further on, 
has the same sense. So Burton : " Ho may rail downright at a spoiler of coun- 
tries, and yet in office be a most grievous poller himself." 

3 Not " friends of the court," but " parasites of the court." 

4 " The safety of the people is the supreme law." 



616 BACOtf. 

happy thing in a State, when kings and states 5 do often con- 
sult with judges ; and, again, when judges do often consult 
with the king and State: the one, when there is matter of law 
intervenient in business of State ; the other, when there is 
some consideration of State intervenient in matter of law ; for 
many times the things deduced to judgment may be meum and 
tuum, when the reason and consequence thereof may trench to 
point of Estate. I call matter of Estate, not only the parts of 
sovereignty, but whatsoever introduceth any great alteration or 
dangerous precedent ; or concerneth manifestly any great por- 
tion of people: and let no man weakly conceive that just laws 
and true policy have any antipathy ; for they are like the spirits 
and sinews, that one moves with the other. Let judges also re- 
member that Solomon's throne was supported by lions on both 
sides : let them be lions, but yet lions under the throne ; being 
circumspect that they do not check or oppose any points of 
sovereignty. Let not judges, also, be so ignorant of their own 
right as to think there is not left them, as a principal part of 
their office, a wise use and application of laws ; for they may 
remember what the apostle saith of a greater law than theirs: 
JSTos scimus quia lex bona est, modo quis ea utatur legitime.* 



OF AKGER. 



To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery 7 of the 
Stoics. We have better oracles : "Be angry, but sin not ; let 
not the Sun go down upon your anger." Anger must be limited 
and confined both in race and in time. We will first speak how 
the natural inclination and habit "to be angry" may be attem- 
pered and calmed ; secondly, how the particular motions of 
anger may be repressed, or at least refrained from doing mis- 
chief ; thirdly, how to raise anger, or appease anger in another. 

For the first, there is no other way but to meditate and rumi- 
nate well upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man's life ; 
and the best time to do this, is to look back upon anger when 
the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, that "anger is 
like rain, which breaks itself upon that it falls." The Scripture 
exhorteth us "to possess our souls in patience" ; whosoever is 
out of j>atience, is out of possession of his soul. Men must not 
turn bees, animasque in vulnere ponunt? Anger is certainly a 

5 States for orders. See page 193, note 2. 

6 " We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully." 

7 Bravery, again, for boast or bravado. See page 576, note 6. 

8 "And sting their lives into the Avound." 



OF ANGEE. 617 

kind of baseness, as it appears well in the weakness of those 
subjects in whom it reigns, children, women, old folks, sick 
folks. Only men must beware that they carry their anger rather 
with scorn than with fear ; so that they may seem rather to be 
above the injury than below it ; which is a thing easily done, if 
a man will give law to himself in it. 

For the second point, the causes and motives of anger are 
chiefly three : first, to be too sensible of hurt ; for no man is 
angry that feels not himself hurt; and therefore tender and 
delicate persons must needs be oft angry, they have so many 
things to trouble them, which more robust natures have little 
sense of : the next is, the apprehension and construction of the 
injury offered, to be, in the circumstances thereof, full of con- 
tempt ; for contempt is that which putteth an edge upon anger, 
as much or more than the hurt itself ; and therefore, when men 
are ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt, they do 
kindle their anger much : lastly, opinion of the touch 9 of a 
man's reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger ; wherein 
the remedy is, that a man should have, as Gon salvo was wont to 
say, telam honoris crassiorim. 1 But, in all refrainings of anger, 
it is the best remedy to win time, and to make a man's self be- 
lieve that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet come ; but 
that he foresees a time for it, and so to still himself in the 
mean time, and reserve it. 

To contain 2 anger from mischief, though it take hold of a 
man, there be two things whereof you must have special cau- 
tion : the one, of extreme bitterness of words, especially if they 
be aculeate and proper ; 3 for communia maledicta* are nothing 
so much: and, again, that in anger a man reveal no secrets ; for 
that makes him not fit for society : the other, that you do not 
peremptorily break off in any business in a fit of anger ; but, 
howsoever you show bitterness, do not act any thing that is not 
revocable. 

For raising or appeasing anger in another, it is done chiefly by 
choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, 
to incense them; again, by gathering (as was touched before) all 

9 A peculiar use of touch, but meaning, apparently, about the same as stain 
or stigma : " the notion that one's reputation is touched." So in the often-quoted 
but misunderstood passage in Troilus and Cressida, iii., 3 : " One touch of nat- 
ure makes the whole world kin"; where the context shows that " one touch of 
nature " is equivalent to one natural blemish, weakness, or folly. 

1 "A thicker covering of honour." 

2 Contain, refrain, and restrain are often used indiscriminately by old 
writers. So in Troilus and Cressida, v., 2: "O, contain yourself; your passion 
draws ears hither." 

3 That is, pointed, or stinging, and personal. 
i ** General reproaches." 



618 BACON - . 

that you can find out to aggravate the contempt : and the two 
remedies are by the contraries ; the former to take good times, 
when first to relate to a man an angry business, for the first im- 
pression is much ; and the other is, to sever, as much as may be, 
the construction of the injury from the point of contempt ; im- 
puting it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you will. 



DISCREDITS OF LEAKNFN'G. 

Here is the first distemper of learning, when men study 
words and not matter. And how is it possible but this should 
have an operation to discredit learning, even with vulgar capaci- 
ties, when they see learned men's works like the first letter of a 
patent, or limned book ; which though it hath large flourishes, 
yet it is but a letter? It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy 5 
is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity : for words are 
but the images of matter ; and except they have life of reason 
and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in 
love with a picture. 

But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be con- 
demned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy 
itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For hereof we 
have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, 
and of Plato also in some degree ; and hereof likewise there is 
great use : for, surely, to the severe inquisition of truth and the 
deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance, because it 
is too early. satisfactory to the mind of man, and quencheth the 
desire of further search, before we come to a just period ; but 
then, if a man be to have any use of such knowledge in civil 
occasions of conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the 
like, then shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors 
which write in that manner. But the excess of this is so justly 
contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the image of 
Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain, JVi7 sacri 
es ; so there is none of Hercules' followers in learning, that is, 
the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth, but 
will despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed capable 
of no divineness. And thus much of the first disease or distem- 
per of learning. 

The second which followeth is in nature worse than the for- 

5 Pygmalion is said to have made an image of a maiden so beautiful, that he 
went mad with love for it, and prayed Aphrodite to breathe life into it. The 
prayer being granted, he then married the maiden. 



DISCREDITS OF LEARKIKG. 619 

mer: for, as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, 
so, contrariwise, vain matter is worse than vain words: wherein 
it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for 
those times, but prophetical for the times following ; and not 
only respective to divinity, but extensive 6 to all knowledge: 
Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scien- 
tioe,? For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and 
falsified science : the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms ; 
the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth 
induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, 
like as many substances in Nature which are solid do putrefy 
and corrupt into worms ; so it is the property of good and sound 
knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtile, 
idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate ques- 
tions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, 
but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind 
of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen; 
who — having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, 
and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in 
the cells of a few authors, (chiefly Aristotle their dictator,) as 
their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and col- 
leges, and knowing little history, either of Nature or time — 
did, out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of 
wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which 
are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it 
work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures 
of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby ; 
but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it 
is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admi- 
rable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance 
or profit. 

This same unprofitable subtilty or curiosity is of two sorts ; 
either in the subject itself that they handle, when it is a fruitless 
speculation or controversy, (whereof there are no small number 
both in divinity and philosophy,) or in the manner or method 
of handling of a knowledge, which amongst them was this : 
Upon every particular position or assertion to frame objections, 
and to those objections, solutions ; which solutions were for the 
most part not confutations, but distinctions : whereas indeed 
the strength of all sciences is; as the strength of the old man's 
faggot, in the bond. For the harmony of a science, supporting 
each part the other, is and ought to be the true and brief conf u- 

6 Extensive for extensible; the active form with the passive sense. This 
indiscriminate use of active and passive forms was very common. 

7 " Shun flippant novelties of speech, and oppositions of science falsely so 
called." 



620 



BACON. 



tation and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections. 
But, on the other side, if you take out every axiom, as the sticks 
of the faggot, one by one, you may quarrel with them, and bend 
them and break them at your pleasure : so that as was said of 
Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera, 8 so a man may 
truly say of the schoolmen, Qucestionum minutiis scientiarum 
frangunt soliditatem. 9 For were it not better for a man in a fair 
room to set up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, 
than to go about with a small watch-candle into every corner? 
And such is their method, that rests not so much upon evidence 
of truth proved by arguments, authorities, similitudes, exam- 
ples, as upon particular confutations and solutions of every 
scruple, cavillation, and objection ; breeding, for the most part, 
one question as fast as it solveth another : even as in the former 
resemblance, when you carry the light into one corner, you 
darken the rest. So that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth 
to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge ; 
which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts ; 
but then Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris .- 1 so 
the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and pro- 
portionable ; but then, when you descend into their distinctions 
and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit 
of man's life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking 
questions. So as it is not possible but this quality of knowl- 
edge must fall under popular contempt, the people being apt to 
contemn truth upon occasion of controversies and altercations, 
and to think they are all out of their way which never meet ; 
and when they see such digladiation about subtilties, and mat- 
ters of no use or moment, they easily fall upon that judgment 
of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba ista sunt senum otiosorum. 2 

Notwithstanding, certain it is that if those schoolmen to their 
great thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had joined 
variety and universality of reading and contemplation, they had 
proved excellent lights, to the great advancement of all learn- 
ing and knowledge ; but, as they are, they are great undertakers 
indeed, and fierce with dark keeping. 3 But as, in the inquiry of 
the Divine truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of 
God's word, and to vanish in the mixture of their own inventions; 
so, in the inquisition of Nature, they ever left the oracle of God's 



8 " He breaks down the strength of things with nice verbal distinctions." 

9 " They fritter away the solid mass of the sciences with minute questions." 

1 " Having her fair loins girded about with barking monsters." 

2 " Those are the words of idle old men." 

3 That is, as certain animals are made fierce by being kept in the dark. Ba- 
con seems to mean that the minds of the schoolmen grew rabid from being 
imprisoned in one idea, or in a narrow cell of thought. 



,'REDITS OF LEARNING. 621 

works, and adored the deceiving and deformed images which 
the unequal mirror of their own minds, or a few received au- 
thors or principles, did represent unto them. And thus much 
for the second disease of learning. 

For the third vice or disease of learning, which concerneth 
deceit or untruth, it is of all the rest the foulest ; as that which 
doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, which is nothing 
but a representation of truth : for the truth of being and the 
truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct 
beam and the beam reflected. This vice therefore brancheth 
itself into two sorts ; delight in deceiving and aptness to be de- 
ceived ; imposture and credulity ; which although they appear 
to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming to proceed of cunning 
and the other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the most 
part concur : for, as the verse noteth, Percontatorem fugito, nam 
garrulus idem est,* an inquisitive man is a prattler ; so upon the 
like reason a credulous man is a deceiver : as we see it in fame, 
that he that will easily believe rumours will as easily augment 
rumours, and add somewhat to them of his own ; which Tacitus 
wisely noteth, when he saith, Fingunt simul creduntque : 5 so 
great an affinity hath fiction and belief. 

As for the overmuch credit that hath been given unto authors 
in sciences, in making them dictators, that their words should 
stand, and not consuls to give advice ; the damage is infinite 
that sciences have received thereby, as the principal cause that 
hath kept them low at a stay without growth or advancement. 
For hence it hath come, that in arts mechanical the first deviser 
comes shortest, and time addeth and perfecteth ; but in sciences 
the first author goeth farthest, and time loseth and corrupteth. 
So, we see, artillery, sailing, printing, and the like, were grossly 
managed at the first, and by time accommodated and refined ; 
but, contrariwise, the philosophies and sciences of Aristotle, 
Plato, Democritus, Hippocrates, Euclides, Archimedes, of most 
vigour at the first and by time degenerate and imbased ; whereof 
the reason is no other, but that in the former many wits and in- 
dustries have contributed in one ; and in the latter many wits 
and industries have been spent about the wit of some one, whom 
many times they have rather depraved than illustrated. For, 
as water will not ascend higher than the level of the first spring- 
head from whence it descendeth, so knowledge derived from 
Aristotle, and exempted from liberty of examination, will not 
rise again higher than the knowledge of Aristotle. And there- 
fore, although the position be good, Oportet discentem credere, yet 

4 " Shun the prying questioner, for he is also talkative." 

5 " They fabricate tales, and at the same time believe them." 



622 bacon - . 



it must be coupled with this, Oportet edoctum judicare ; 6 for dis- 
ciples do owe unto masters only a temporary belief and a sus- 
pension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed, and 
not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity. And there- 
fore, to conclude this point, I will say no more, but so let great 
authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, 
be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to dis- 
cover truth. 

Thus have I gone over these three diseases of learning ; be- 
sides the which there are some other rather peccant humours 
than formed diseases, which nevertheless are not so secret and 
intrinsic but that they fall under a popular observation and tra- 
ducement, and therefore are not to be passed over. 

The first of these is the extreme affecting of two extremi- 
ties, — the one antiquity, the other novelty ; wherein it seemeth 
the children of Time do take after the nature and malice of the 
father. For, as he devoureth his children, so one of them seek- 
eth to devour and suppress the other : while antiquity envieth 
there should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content 
to add, but it must deface. Surely the advice of the prophet is 
the true direction in this matter, State super vias antiquas, et 
videte qucenam sit via recta et bona et ambulate in ea. 7 Antiquity 
deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand there- 
upon and discover what is the best way ; but, when the discov- 
ery is well taken, then to make progression. And, to speak 
truly, Antiquitas scp.culi juventus mundi* These times are the 
ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which 
we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation back- 
ward from ourselves. 

Another error, that hath also some affinity with the former, 
is a conceit that of former opinions or sects after variety and ex- 
amination the best hath still prevailed and suppressed the rest ; 
so as, if a man should begin the labour of a new search, he were 
but like to light upon somewhat formerly rejected, and by re- 
jection brought into oblivion: as if the multitude, or the wisest 
for the multitude's sake, were not ready to give passage rather 
to that which is popular and superficial than to that which is 
substantial and profound ; for the truth is, that time seemeth 
to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to 
us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth 
that which is weighty and solid. 

Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence, and 

6 "The learner ought to believe," and, " the learned ought to judge." 

7 " Take your stand upon the ancient ways, and search which is the right 
and good way, and walk therein," 

8 " The antiquity of time is the youth of the world." 



is- 
la- 
nd 



DISCKEDITS OF LEARNING. 623 

a kind of adoration of the mind and understanding of man ; by 
means whereof, men have withdrawn themselves too much from 
the contemplation of Nature, and the observations of experience, 
and have tumbled up and down in their own reason and con- 
ceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are notwithstanding 
commonly taken for the most sublime and divine philosophers, 
Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying, "Men sought truth in 
their own little worlds, and not in the great and common world" ; 
for they disdain to spell, and so by degrees to read in the vol- 
ume of God's works: and, contrariwise, by continual meditation 
and agitation of wit do urge and as it were invocate their own 
spirits to divine and give oracles unto them, whereby they are 
deservedly deluded. 

Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to asser- 
tion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the 
two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of ac- 
tion commonly spoken of by the ancients : the one plain and 
smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable ; the other 
rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair 
and even: so it is in contemplation ; if a man will begin with 
certainties, he shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content to 
begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. 

Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery 
of knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremp- 
tory, and not ingenuous and faithful ; in a sort as may be soon- 
est believed, and not easiliest examined. It is true that in com- 
pendious treatises for practice that form is not to be disallowed ; 
but in the true handling of knowledge, men ought not to fall 
either on the one side into the vein of Velleius the Epicurean, 
Nil tarn metuens, quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur; 9 nor on 
the other side into Socrates' ironical doubting of all things ; but 
to propound things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as 
they stand in a man's own judgment proved more or less. 

Other errors there are in the scope that men propound to 
themselves, whereunto they bend their endeavours: for, whereas 
the more constant and devote kind of professors of any science 
ought to propound to themselves to make some additions to 
their science, they convert their labours to aspire to certain 
second prizes ; as, to be a profound interpreter or commenter, 
to be a sharp champion or defender, to be a methodical com- 
pounder or abridger ; and so the patrimony of knowledge cometh 
to be sometimes improved, but seldom augmented. 

But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or mis- 
placing of the last or farthest end of knowledge. Por men have 

9 «' His greatest fear was, lest he should seem to doubt of any thing." 



624 BACOK. 

entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes 
upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes to 
entertain their minds with variety and delight ; sometimes for 
ornament and reputation ; and sometimes to enable them to 
victory of wit and contradiction ; and most times for lucre and 
profession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their 
gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men : as if there were 
sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and 
restless spirit ; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind 
to walk up and down with a fair prospect ; or a tower of State, 
for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding 
ground, for strife and contention ; or a shop, for profit or sale ; 
and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the 
relief of man's estate. But this is that which will indeed digni- 
fy and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be 
more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than 
they have been ; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest 
planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupi- 
ter, the planet of civil society and action. Howbeit, I do not 
mean, when I speak of use and action, that end before-mentioned 
of the applying of knowledge to lucre and profession ; for I am 
not ignorant how much that diverteth and interrupteth the 
prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the 
golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which while she goeth aside 
and stoopeth to take up, the race is hindered ; Dedinat cursus, 
aurumque volubile tollit. 1 Neither is my meaning, as was spoken 
of Socrates, to call philosophy down from Heaven to converse 
upon the Earth ; that is, to leave natural philosophy aside, and 
to apply knowledge only to manners and policy. But, as both 
Heaven and Earth do conspire and contribute to the use and 
benefit of man ; so the end ought to be, from both philosophies 
to separate and reject vain speculations, and whatsoever is 
empty and void, and to preserve and augment whatsoever is 
solid and fruitful: that knowledge may not be as a courtesan, 
for pleasure and vanity only, or as a bond-woman, to acquire 
and gain to her master's use ; but as a spouse, for generation, 
fruit, and comfort. 



DIGNITY AND VALUE OE ICNOWLEDGE. 

Eirst let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or 
first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far 
as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety ; 

1 " She turns aside from her course, and picks up the rolling gold." 



DIGNITY AND VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 625 

wherein we may not seek it by the name of learning ; for all 
learning is knowledge acquired, and all knowledge in God is 
original: and therefore we must look. for it by another name, 
that of wisdom or sapience, as the Scriptures call it. 

It is so, then, that in the work of the creation we see a double 
emanation of virtue from God ; the one referring more properly 
to power, the other to wisdom ; the one expressed in making 
the subsistence of the matter, and the other in disposing the 
beauty of the form. This being supposed, it is to be observed 
that for any thing which appeareth in the history of the creation, 
the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth was made in 
a moment ; and the order and disposition of that chaos or mass 
was the work of six days ; such a note of difference it pleased 
God to put upon the works of power and the works of wisdom ; 
wherewith concurreth, that in the former it is not set down that 
God said, "Let there be heaven and earth," as it is set down of 
the works following ; but actually, that God made heaven and 
earth; the one carrying the style of a manufacture, and the 
other of a law, decree, or counsel. 

After the creation was finished, it is set down unto us that 
man was placed in the garden to work therein ; which work, so 
appointed to him, could be.no other than work of contempla- 
tion ; that is, when the end of work is but for exercise and ex- 
periment, not for necessity; for, there being then no reluctation 
of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, man's employment must 
of consequence have been matter of delight in the experiment, 
and not matter of labour for the use. Again, the first acts 
which man performed in Paradise consisted of the two summary 
parts of knowledge ; the view of creatures, and the imposition 
of names. As for the knowledge which induced the fall, it was 
not the natural knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowl- 
edge of good and evil ; wherein the supposition was, that God's 
commandments or prohibitions were not the originals of good 
and evil, but that they had other beginnings, which man aspired 
to know ; to the end to make a total defection from God and to 
depend wholly upon himself. 

To descend to Moses the lawgiver, and God's first pen : he is 
adorned by the Scriptures with this addition and commendation, 
"That he was seen in all the learning of the Egyptians "; which 
nation we know was one of the most ancient schools of the 
world : for so Plato brings in the Egyptian priest saying unto 
Solon, "You Grecians are ever children ; you have no knowl- 
edge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge." Take a view of 
the ceremonial law of Moses: you shall find, besides the prefig- 
uration of Christ, the badge or difference of the people of God, 
the exercise and impression of obedience, and other divine uses 



626 bacon". 

and fruits thereof, that some of the most learned Kabbins have 
travailed profitably and profoundly to observe, some of them a 
natural, some of them a moral sense, or reduction of many of 
the ceremonies and ordinances. As in the law of the leprosy, 
where it is said, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the 
patient may pass abroad for clean ; but if there be any whole 
flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean "; one of them 
noteth a principle of Nature, that putrefaction is more conta- 
gious before maturity than after : and another noteth a position 
of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so 
much corrupt manners, as those that are half good and half evil. 
So in this and very many other places in that law, there is to be 
found, besides the theological sense, much aspersion of phi- 
losophy. 

So likewise in the person of Solomon the King, we see the 
gift or endowment of wisdom and learning, both in Solomon's 
petition and in God's assent thereunto, preferred before all 
other terrene and temporal felicity. By virtue of which grant 
or donative of God, Solomon became enabled not only to write 
those excellent parables or aphorisms concerning divine and 
moral philosophy ; but also to compile a natural history of all 
verdure, from the cedar upon the mountain to the moss upon 
the wall, (which is but a rudiment between putrefaction and an 
herb,) and also of all things that breathe or move. Nay, the 
same Solomon the King, although he excelled in the glory of 
treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, 
of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, 
yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the 
glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The 
glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to 
find it out"; as if, according to the innocent play of children, 
the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end 
to have them found out ; and as if kings could not obtain a 
greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game ; con- 
sidering the great commandment of wits and means, whereby 
nothing needeth to be hidden from them. 

Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times after 
our Saviour came into the world ; for our Saviour himself did 
first show His -power to subdue ignorance, by His conference 
with the priests and doctors of the law, before He showed His 
power to subdue Nature by His miracles. And the coming of 
the Holy Spirit was chiefly figured and expressed in the simili- 
tude and gift of tongues, which are but vehicula scientice. 

So in the election of those instruments which it pleased God 
to use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that at 
the first He did employ persons altogether unlearned, otherwise 



DIGNITY AND VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 627 

than by inspiration, more evidently to declare His immediate 
working, and to abase all human wisdom and knowledge ; yet 
nevertheless that counsel of His was no sooner performed, but 
in the next vicissitude and succession He did send His divine 
truth into the world, waited on with other learnings, as with 
servants and handmaids : for so we see St. Paul, who was 
only learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen most used in 
the Scriptures of the New Testament. 

So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers 
of the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learn- 
ing of the heathen ; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor 
Julianus (whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be ad- 
mitted into schools, lectures, or exercises of learning) was es- 
teemed and accounted a more pernicious engine and machination 
against the Christian Faith than were all the sanguinary perse- 
cutions of his predecessors ; neither could the emulation and 
jealousy of Gregory the first of that name, Bishop of Rome, 
ever obtain the opinion of piety or devotion ; but, contrariwise, 
received the censure of humour, malignrcy, and pusillanimity, 
even amongst holy men ; in that he designed to obliterate and 
extinguish the memory of heathen antiquity and authors. But, 
contrariwise, it was the Christian Church, which, amidst the 
inundations of the Scythians on the one side from the North- 
west, and the Saracens from the East, did preserve in the sacred 
lap and bosom thereof the precious relics even of heathen learn- 
ing, which otherwise had been extinguished as if no such thing 
had ever been. 

Wherefore, to conclude this part, let it be observed, that there 
be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and illus- 
tration, which philosophy and human learning do perform to 
faith and religion. The one, because they are an effectual in- 
ducement to the exaltation of the glory of God. For, as the 
Psalms and other Scriptures do often invite us to consider and 
magnify the great and wonderful works of God, so, if we should 
rest only in the contemplation of the exterior of them as they 
first offer themselves to our senses, we should do a like injury 
unto the majesty of God, as if we should judge or construe of 
the store of some excellent jeweller, by that only which is set 
out toward the street in his shop. The other, because they 
minister a singular help and preservative against unbelief and 
error. For our Saviour saith, " You err, not knowing the Scrip- 
tures, nor the power of God" ; laying before us two books or 
volumes to study, if we will be secured from error ; first the 
Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures, 
expressing His power ; whereof the latter is a key unto the 
former : not only opening our understanding to conceive the 



628 



BACON. 



true sense of the Scriptures, by the general notions of reason 
and rules of speech ; but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing 
us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is 
chiefly signed and engraven upon His works. Thus much there- 
fore for Divine testimony and evidence concerning the true dig- 
nity and value of learning. 

As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a discourse of 
this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice of those 
things which we shall produce, than to embrace the variety 
of them. First, therefore, in the degrees of human honour 
amongst the heathen, it was the highest to obtain to a venera- 
tion and adoration as a god. This unto the Christians is as the 
forbidden fruit. But we speak now separately of human testi- 
mony; according to which, that which the Grecians call apo- 
theosis, and the Latins relatio inter divos, was the supreme honour 
which man could attribute unto man ; specially when it was 
given, not by a formal decree or Act of State, as it was used 
among the Roman Emperors, but by an inward assent and be- 
lief. Which honour, being so high, had also a degree or middle 
term : for there were reckoned, above human honours, honours 
heroical and divine ; in the attribution and distribution of which 
honours we see antiquity made this difference : that whereas 
founders and uniters of States and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of 
tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in 
civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of worthies or 
demi-gods ; such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minos, Romulus, 
and the like ; on the other side, such as were inventors and au- 
thors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's 
life, were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves ; as 
was Ceres, Racchus, Mercurius, Apollo, and others : and justly ; 
for the merit of the former is confined within the circle of an 
age or a nation ; and is like fruitful showers, which, though 
they be profitable and good, yet serve but for that season, and 
for a latitude of ground where they fall ; but the other is indeed 
like the benefits of Heaven, which are permanent and universal. 
The former again is mixed with strife and perturbation ; but 
the latter hath the true character of Divine Presence, coming in 
aura lent, without noise or agitation. 

Neither is certainly that other merit of learning, in repressing 
the inconveniences which grow from man to man, much inferior 
to the former, of relieving the necessities which arise from na- 
ture ; which merit was lively set forth by the ancients in that 
feigned relation of Orpheus' theatre, where all beasts and birds 
assembled ; and forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, 
some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together lis- 
tening unto the airs and accords of the harp ; the sound whereof 



DIGNITY AND VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 629 

no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but 
every beast returned to his own nature: wherein is aptly de- 
scribed the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage 
and unreclaimed desires, of profit, of lust, of revenge ; which as 
long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly 
touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of sermons, of 
harangues, so long is society and peace maintained ; but if these 
instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them 
not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion. 

But this appeareth more manifestly, when kings themselves, 
or persons of authority under them, or other governors in com- 
monwealths and popular Estates, 2 are endued with learning. 
For, although he might be thought partial to his own profession, 
that said "Then should people and Estates be happy, when 
either kings were philosophers, or philosophers kings " ; yet so 
much is verified by experience, that under learned princes and 
governors there have been ever the best times ; for howsoever 
kings may have their imperfections in their passions and cus- 
toms ; yet if they be illuminate by learning, they have those 
notions of religion, policy, and morality, which do preserve 
them and refrain them from all ruinous and peremptory errors 
and excesses ; whispering evermore in their ears, when coun- 
sellors and servants stand mute and silent. And senators or 
counsellors likewise, which be learned, do proceed upon more 
safe and substantial principles, than counsellors which are only 
men of experience ; the one sort keeping dangers afar off, 
whereas the other discover them not till they come near hand, 
and then trust to the agility of their wit to ward or avoid them. 

It were too long to go over the particular remedies which 
learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind ; some- 
times purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the ob- 
structions, sometimes helping digestion, sometimes increasing 
appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and exulcerations 
thereof, and the like ; and therefore I will conclude with that 
which hath rationem totius ; which is, that it disposeth the 
constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the de- 
fects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of growth 
and reformation. For the unlearned man knows not what it 
is to descend into himself, or to call himself to account, nor 
the pleasure of that suavissima vita, indies sentire se fieri me- 
liorem. 3 The good parts he hath he will learn to show to 
the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase 

2 Estate and state were used indiscriminately in Bacon's time. 

3 " The greatest delight of life is to feel that one is growing better every 
day." 



630 



BACON". 






them. Tlie faults he hath he will learn how to hide and colour 
them, but not much to amend them ; like an ill mower, that 
mows on still, and never whets his scythe. Whereas with the 
learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the 
correction and amendment of his mind with the use and em- 
ployment thereof. Nay, further ; in general and in sum, cer- 
tain it is that Veritas and Bonitas differ but as the seal and the 
print : for Truth prints Goodness, and they be the clouds of 
error which descend in the storms of passions and perturbations. 

From moral virtue let us pass on to matter of power and com- 
mandment, and consider whether in right reason there be any 
comparable with that wherewith knowledge investeth and 
crowneth man's nature. We see the dignity of the command- 
ment is according to the dignity of the commanded: to have 
commandment over beasts, as herdmen have, is a thing con- 
temptible; to have commandment over children, as schoolmas- 
ters have, is a matter of small honour; to have commandment 
over galley-slaves is a disparagement rather than an honour. 
Neither is the commandment of tyrants much better, over 
people which have put off the generosity 4 of their minds: and 
therefore it was ever holden that honours in free monarchies 
and commonwealths had a sweetness more than in tyrannies, 
because the commandment extendeth more over the wills of 
men, and not only over their deeds and services. But yet the 
commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the command- 
ment over the will; for it is a commandment over the reason, 
belief, and understanding of man, which is the highest part of 
the mind, and giveth law to the will itself. For there is no 
power on Earth which setteth up a throne or chair of Estate in 
the spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations, imagina- 
tions, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning. And 
therefore we see the detestable and extreme pleasure that arch- 
heretics, and false prophets, and impostors are transported 
with, when they once find in themselves that they have a supe- 
riority in the faith and conscience of men ; so great as, if they 
have once tasted of it, it is seldom seen that any torture or per- 
secution can make them relinquish or abandon it. But as this 
is that which the author of the Revelation calleth the depth or 
profoundness of Satan, so, by argument of contraries, the just 
and lawful sovereignty over men's understanding, by force of 
truth rightly interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to 
the similitude of the Divine rule. 

Again, for the pleasure and delight of knowledge and learn- 
ing, it far surpasseth all other in Nature. For, shall the pleas- 

4 Generosity in the Latin sense of nobleness, excellence, or magnanimity. 



DIGNITY AND VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. G31 

ures of the affections so exceed the pleasure of the sense, as 
much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a song or 
a dinner? and must not of consequence the pleasures of the 
intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affec- 
tions? We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and, after 
they be used, their verdure departeth ; which showeth well 
they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures ; and that it 
was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality. And 
therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious 
princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, 
but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable ; 
and therefore it appeareth to be good in itself simply, without 
fallacy or accident. 

Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man 
excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts ; that by 
learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, 
where in body he cannot come ; and the like ; let us conclude 
with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in 
that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immor- 
tality or continuance : for to this tendeth generation, and rais- 
ing of Houses and families ; to this tend buildings, foundations, 
and monuments ; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, 
and celebration ; and in effect the strength of all other human 
desires. We see then how far the monuments of wit and learn- 
ing are more durable than the monuments of power or of the 
hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty- 
five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or 
letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, 
cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible 
to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Csesar, 
no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years ; 
for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of 
the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and knowl- 
edges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and 
capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be 
called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds 
in 5 the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions 
and opinions in succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of 
the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and com- 
modities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote 
regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are let- 
ters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas 
of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, 
illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other ! Nay, f ur- 

5 In and into were often used interchangeably. 



632 



BACON-. 



ther ; we see some of the philosophers which were least divine, 
and most immersed in the senses, and denied generally the im- 
mortality of the soul, yet came to this point, that whatsoever 
motions the spirit of man could act and perform without the 
organs of the body, they thought might remain after death ; 
which were only those of the understanding, and not of the 
affections; so immortal and incorruptible a thing did knowledge 
seem unto them to be. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



If such be the capacity and receipt of the mind of man, it 
is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or 
quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make 
the mind swell or out-compass itself: no; but it is merely 
the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, 
if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it 
some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that 
venom, which is ventosity 6 or swelling. This corrective spice, 
the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, 
which the Apostle addeth: for so he saith, " Knowledge bloweth 
up, but charity buildeth up " ; not unlike unto that which he 
delivereth in another place: "If I spake with the tongues of 
men and angels, and had not charity, it were but as a tinkling 
cymbal"; not but that it is an excellent thing to speak with 
the tongues of men and angels, but because, if it be severed 
from charity, and not referred to the good of men and mankind, 
it hath rather a sounding and unworthy glory, than a meriting 
and substantial virtue. 



As for the conceit 7 that too much knowledge should incline 
a man to atheism, and that the ignorance of second causes 
should make a more devout dependence upon God, which is 
the first cause ; first, it is good to ask the question which Job 
asked of his friends : " Will you lie for God, as one man will do 
for another, to gratify him ? " For certain it is that God worketh 
nothing in Nature but by second causes : and if they would 
have it otherwise believed, it is mere imposture, as it were in 
favour towards God ; and nothing else but to offer to the 

6 Ventosity is windiness : here it has the sense of blown up with pride or 
conceit. 

7 In Bacon's time, conceit was always used in a good sense,— conception, 
imagination, or judgment. 



MISCELLANEOUS- 633 

Author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie. But, further, it 
is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little 
or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of 
man to atheism, but a further proceeding therein doth bring the 
mind back again to religion. For, in the entrance of philosophy, 
when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer 
themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there it may 
induce some oblivion of the highest cause ; but when a man 
passeth on further, and seeth the dependence of causes, and the 
works of Providence ; then, according to the allegory of the 
poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of Nature's 
chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair. To 
conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety 
or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain, that a man can 
search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word, 
or in the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy; but 
rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in 
both : only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and 
not to swelling ; to use, and not to ostentation ; and again, that 
they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings 
together. 

Learning endueth men's minds with a true sense of the 
frailty of their persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and the 
dignity of their soul and vocation : so that it is impossible for 
them to esteem that any greatness of their own fortune can be 
a true or worthy end of their being and ordainment ; and 
therefore are desirous to give their account to God, and so like- 
wise to their masters under God : whereas the corrupter sort of 
mere politiques, that have not their thoughts established by 
learning in the love and apprehension of duty, nor never look 
abroad into universality, do refer all things to themselves, and 
thrust themselves into the centre of the world, as if all lines 
should meet in them and their fortunes ; never caring in all 
tempests what becomes of the ship of Estate, so they may save 
themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune. 



Poesy is a part of learning in measure of words for the most 
part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and 
doth truly refer to the imagination ; which, being not tied to 
the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which Nature hath 
severed, and sever that which Nature hath joined. It is taken 
in two senses in respect of words or matter. In the first sense 
it is but a character of style, and belongeth to arts of speech. 
In the latter it is one of the principal portions of learning, and 



C34 BACOX. 

is nothing else but feigned history, which may be styled 8 as 
well in prose as in verse. 

The use of this feigned history hath been to give some 
shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points 
wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in 
proportion inferior to the soul ; by reason whereof there is, 
agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more 
exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found 
in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events 
of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the 
mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more 
heroical. Because true history propoundeth the successes and 
issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and 
vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and 
more according to revealed providence. Because true history 
representeth actions and events more ordinary and less inter- 
changed, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and 
more unexpected and alternative variations. So as it appeareth 
that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, 
and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have 
some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect 
the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of 
the mind ; 9 whereas reason doth buckle 10 and bow the mind 
unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinua- 
tions and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined 
also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath 
had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, 
where other learning stood excluded. 



As all works do show forth the power and skill of the work- 
man, and not his image, so it is of the works of God, which do 
show the omnipotency and wisdom of the Maker, but not His 
image. And therefore therein the heathen opinion differeth 
from the sacred truth ; for they supposed the world to be the 
image of God, and man to be an extract or compendious image 
of the world ; but the Scriptures never vouchsafe to attribute to 
the world that honour, as to be the image of God, but only the 
work of His hands ; neither do they speak of any other image of 

8 Styled is here used in the sense of written or penned, as the stilus was the 
instrument of writing, the ancient pen. 

9 Sir Philip Sydney describes poetry as "the sweet food of sweetly-uttered 
knowledge," which " lifts the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoy- 
ing its oavii divine essence." 

10 To buckle is to bend. Shakespeare uses it intransitively in 2 Henry IV., i., 
1 : "And as a wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, like strengthless hinges, 
buckle under life," &c. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 635 

God but man. Wherefore, by the contemplation of Nature to 
induce and enforce the acknowledgment of God, and to demon- 
strate His power, providence, and goodness, is an excellent argu- 
ment, and hath been excellently handled by divers. But, on the 
other side, out of the contemplation of Nature, or ground of 
human knowledges, to induce any verity or persuasion concern- 
ing the points of faith, is in my judgment not safe. For the 
heathen themselves conclude as much in that excellent and 
divine fable of the golden chain, — that "men and gods were 
not able to draw Jupiter down to the Earth ; but, contrariwise, 
Jupiter was able to draw them up to Heaven." So as we ought 
not to attempt io draw down or submit the mysteries of God to 
our reason ; but, contrariwise, to raise and advance our reason 
to the Divine truth. 



Of all other means the most compendious and summary, 
and, again, the most noble and effectual, to the reducing of the 
mind unto virtue and good estate, is the electing and propound- 
ing unto a man's self good and virtuous ends of his life, such 
as may be in a reasonable sort within his compass to attain. 
For, if these two things be supposed, that a man set before him 
honest and good ends, and again, that he be resolute, constant, 
and true unto them ; it will follow that he shall mould himself 
into all virtue at once. And this indeed is like a work of 
Nature ; whereas the other course is like the work of the hand. 
For so, when a carver makes an image, he shapes only that part 
whereupon he worketh ; as, if he be upon the face, that part 
which shall be the body is but a rude stone still, till such time 
as he comes to it. But, contrariwise, when Nature makes a 
flower or living creature, she formeth rudiments of all the parts 
at one time. So, in obtaining virtue by habit, while a man 
practiseth temperance, he doth not profit much to fortitude, 
nor the like : but when he dedicateth and applieth himself to 
good ends, look, what virtue soever the pursuit and passage 
towards those ends doth commend unto him, he is invested of 
a precedent disposition to conform himself thereunto. Which 
state of mind Aristotle doth excellently express himself, that 
it ought not to be called virtuous, but divine. But the heathen 
and profane passages have but a shadow of that divine state 
of mind which religion and the holy faith doth conduct men 
unto, by imprinting upon their souls charity, which is excel- 
lently called the bond of perfection, because it comprehendeth 
and fasteneth all virtues together. Certainly, if a man's mind 
be truly inflamed with charity, it cloth work him suddenly into 
greater perfection than all the doctrine of morality can do. 



636 eacox. 

As dead flies cause the best ointment to send forth an ill odour, so 
doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour. — 
The condition of men eminent for virtue is, as this aphorism ex- 
cellently observes, exceeding hard and miserable, because their 
errors, though ever so small, are not overlooked. But, as in a 
clear diamond every little grain or speck strikes the eye dis- 
agreeably, though it would scarce be observed in a duller stone ; 
so, in men of eminent virtue, their smallest vices are readily 
spied, talked of, and severely censured ; whilst, in an ordinary 
man, they would either have lain concealed, or been easily ex- 
cused. Whence a little folly in a very wise man, a small slip in 
a very good man, and a little indecency in a polite and elegant 
man, greatly diminish their characters and reputations. It 
might, therefore, be no bad policy, for men of uncommon ex- 
cellencies to intermix with their actions a few absurdities, that 
may be committed without vice ; in order to reserve a liberty, 
and confound the observation of little defects. 



A prudent man looks well to his steps ; but a fool turns aside to 
deceit. — There are two kinds of prudence ; the one true and 
sound; the other degenerate and false : the latter Solomon 
calls by the name of folly. The candidate for the former has 
an eye to his footings, looking out for dangers, contriving 
remedies, and, by the assistance of good men, defending him- 
self against the bad : he is wary in entering upon business, and 
not unprovided of a retreat; watchful for opportunities; 
powerful against opposition, &c. But the follower of the other 
is wholly patched up of fallacy and cunning ; placing all his 
hope in the circumventing of others, and forming them to his 
fancy. And this the aphorism justly rejects as a vicious, and 
even a weak kind of prudence. For, first, it is by no means a 
thing in our own power, nor depending upon any constant rule ; 
but is daily inventing of new stratagems, as the old ones fail 
and grow useless. Secondly, he who has once the character of 
a crafty, tricking man, is entirely deprived of a principal instru- 
ment of business, trust ; whence he will find nothing succeed to 
his wish. Lastly, however specious and pleasing these arts 
may seem, yet they are often frustrated ; as was well observed 
by Tacitus, when he said that crafty and bold counsels, though 
pleasant in the expectation, are hard to execute, and unhappy 
in the event. 



